Geography
Academic Year 2023-2024 - KS1 and KS2 are currently covering Cycle A on our planning.
Geography is a vital and rich contribution to a balanced and broad curriculum which enables children to develop a thirst for knowledge about the world around them. Through Geography, we trigger investigative thinking and allow children’s minds to reach beyond their classroom. By teaching Geography, we intend to impart pupils with the knowledge, understanding, confidence, attitudes, values and skills they need in order to reach their potential as individuals in Geography, their local community and the wider world.
Key concepts: A range of these ideas are explored and provide lenses through which to consider different aspects of this area of the pupils’ geographical development.
- Navigation: (interpreting a key, conventions of maps, map symbols, atlases, GIS, google maps, scale factor, reading and calculating from a scale, using compass points, the equator, the tropic lines, the poles, borders, countries and continents)
- Fieldwork: (Working collaboratively, planning investigations, collecting data, using instruments/specialist equipment, taking precise measurements, making observations, drawing conclusions)
- Economic activity: (Trade, land use, farming, wealth, poverty, imports and exports)
- Tectonic activity: (Volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic plates, structure of the earth)
- Human features: (Transports, harbour, shops, towns, villages, community, places of worship)
- Physical features: (Water cycle, rainfall, mountains, hills, rivers, seas, oceans, tides, islands, tsunami)
- Natural resources: (Energy, minerals, food and water distribution)
- Sustainability: (Deforestation, climate change, renewable and non-renewable resources, sea level, food miles, industry, materials, globalisation)
- Climate and landscape: (Weather, rainfall, seasons, temperature, desert, polar, temperate, Mediterranean, arid, tropical, biomes, vegetation zones, tundra)
Intent
The intent of our geography curriculum is to lay the foundations for a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as inspiring our children to develop a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. We aim to promote the children's interest and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments. Malpas Alport provides a geography curriculum that is ambitious and designed for all children. It is coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively providing the necessary knowledge and skills for the children’s future to empower them to take their role as informed and active citizens in the 21st century. Its emphasis is not just on geographical knowledge but also skills and concepts.
Implementation
As a school we follow Rising Stars Geography to develop the children’s core geographical knowledge, enriching the programme with resources from the Geographical Association. A wealth of teaching approaches appropriate to the content and desired learning outcomes are used to engage all children and enable them to not just acquire knowledge but to apply it in meaningful contexts. Appropriate discussion is used as a means of checking children’s geographical learning systematically, identifying misconceptions and providing immediate feedback. Questions and tasks to stretch and challenge the most able children are incorporated where appropriate.
Revisiting ideas and concepts in different, more challenging, contexts in later units, using varied assessments and the inclusion of quizzes encourage the children to remember content and integrate new knowledge into their evolving conceptual framework. Online quality resources and materials support our geography curriculum. There is an emphasis on visual literacy in the use and questioning of online materials and resources, as geography is essentially a visual subject.
We do this by:
- Providing all children with equal access to a rich, broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum matched well to their ages, abilities, interests, and individual needs.
- Increasing children’s knowledge, skills and understanding as they grow and develop and increase their connections with the world around them.
- Carefully planning our curriculum to ensure that learning is continuous and that children make good progress with the development of their learning.
- Engaging the children’s interest and to encourage and motivate them to want to learn.
- Teaching an exciting curriculum and offering the children many first-hand experiences to reinforce their learning and to underpin their growing knowledge, skills and understanding of the world, which will prepare them to be active members of a future community.
- Opening their eyes to awe and wonder and cause them to marvel at the incredible and fantastic world in which they live.
Impact
The impact of our geography curriculum is evidenced through the children’s use and understanding of geographical vocabulary and their association of it with relevant images or features. It is also demonstrated by the children’s ability to show progress along the ‘observe, use geographical vocabulary to describe, compare, give reasons and explain what they are learning about’ sequence, and in their acquisition, application and transferability of geographical skills. The broad range of approaches for children to communicate their knowledge ensures that everyone can demonstrate progression and impact.
In particular, it is evidenced by the children’s ability, willingness and confidence in addressing and discussing key geographical questions, focusing on geographical vocabulary, skills and concepts.
By understanding the world around them, the children are taken on a journey of discovery of themselves and others. Through the learning opportunities children are able to develop a fascination for the world that they live in exploring and questioning as they discover.