Intent

At Bishop Ridley C of E Primary School, we aim to develop a love of geography by delivering an engaging and exciting curriculum that will promote pupils’ curiosity by enabling them to use spatial organisation to make sense of the world and its people, places and environments through explanatory relationships.

Pupils’ geographical education begins in the early years and builds year on year, developing pupils’ expertise. The organisation of the curriculum builds knowledge so that pupils can draw on it in future learning. Pupils are increasingly able to apply generalisations to understand the world around them. A clearly mapped journey starting in the early years and developing through the curriculum is critical if pupils are to move towards becoming experts in the subject.

The geography community typically refers to ‘concepts’ as a means of categorising geographical knowledge of natural and human phenomena. Concepts are important in geography as they draw out the links between processes and ideas:

Place; space, scale; interdependence; physical and human processes; environmental impact; sustainable development; cultural awareness and cultural diversity.

It is critical that the content of the curriculum is broken down into component parts (or chunks) that pupils can first comprehend in their own right, before combining different components to gain a fuller conceptual appreciation.  Our topic-based curriculum is designed with progression in mind and it incorporates the current National Curriculum Programmes of Study for KS1 and KS2. Geographical vocabulary is built on each year.

In addition, pupils will have opportunities to take part in fieldwork. Fieldwork has been described as ‘the medium that enables formal education outside of the classroom’ so that pupils can conceptualise their classroom learning.

Implementation

The teaching and implementation of the Geography curriculum at Bishop Ridley is based on the National Curriculum and is supported by the Cornerstones 22 curriculum. Projects are well-sequenced to provide a coherent subject scheme that develops children’s skills and knowledge of human and physical geography.

In each year group, geography knowledge and skills are taught in the Autumn term. Pupils then implement this knowledge into a more thematic-based unit of work in the Spring or Summer term. Where possible, cross-curricular links are made to other subjects, for example, in Year 4, pupils learn about rivers and mountains for their topic, Misty Mountain, Winding River, they learn about landscape art with the partner topic Vista in the same term.

Where possible, projects which require similar materials are spaced out to have minimal strain on resources across the school, for example, in Lower Key Stage 2, the children learn about 4 figure grid references and in Upper Key Stage 2, the children advance to learning about 6 figure grid references: the children share the use of the OS Maps resourced in the school to get a real experience of using grid references to precisely locate human and physical geography on a map.

Geography is implemented from Early Years to Year 6.  In Reception the children begin the year by learning how to describe their immediate environment and end the year learning about where water can be found.  In KS1, both year groups start with topics that cover the UK and the wider world and they begin to learn how to use atlases, they locate the world’s continents and oceans and are introduced to the location of the UK’s capital cities.  The children then have the knowledge to build on these skills as they move into Years 3 and 4 where they first begin to locate different countries, they learn about physical processes such as how erosion and deposition shapes the land, their knowledge of the hemispheres is reinforced and they are introduced to longitude and latitude.  In Years 5 and 6 they look more closely at human geography: migration, climate change and how land and places change over time.  They also study the geography of a polar climate in contrast to that in the UK.

Impact

The purpose of studying geography at Bishop Ridley gives children a high quality geography education that provides our learners with an effective curriculum which inspires in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. The resources used to deliver lessons enable children to develop subject specific vocabulary and gain the skills needed by providing coverage of location knowledge; place knowledge; human and physical geography and fieldwork so that the children can become confident and able geographers when they leave Bishop Ridley at the end of Year 6.

Ongoing, formative assessment is used in each lesson, where staff assess pupils against relevant success criteria. Target Tracker is used to record pupils' attainment and progress within geography and this is overseen by the geography subject leader.