Geography

At Manor Fields Primary School, we aim for the Geography curriculum to inspire pupils to ask and answer questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject; we wish for all children to develop a sense of inquisitiveness, creativity and questioning. We seek to inspire their curiosity and build their fascination about the world they live in; we want children to know that life exists outside the digital world and be excited and interested by it.

By building a curriculum which takes full advantage of our rich surrounding geography, including Salisbury Cathedral, Stonehenge and Old Sarum, this helps children to develop a sense of belonging within our local area and the community within it. All children are encouraged to develop a deeper understanding and knowledge of the world as well as their place in it with the intention to broaden their horizons and aspirations.

The geography curriculum at Manor Fields progressively enables children to develop knowledge and skills that can be transferred to other curriculum areas. These include skills which can, and are, used to promote their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and skills that develop their communication and oracy.

Our curriculum is designed to build children’s knowledge skills in a progressive and transferable way. Each year, children’s knowledge is built upon, developed and revisited allowing children to store the information in their long-term memories and retrieve it when needed.

Our aim for all children at Manor Fields is for them to understand what geography is and how important it is in the ever-changing world that we live in. At Manor Fields, all children have the opportunity to explore how they can make a difference in the world.

Please see below for the geography topics:

 
Geography Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

At Manor Fields, our intent is for the geography curriculum to inspire children’s curiosity, interest and enthusiasm to explore and investigate the world they live in, igniting and complementing their developing love of learning.

Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject; it promotes an understanding of transferable concepts, knowledge and skills. Each geography lesson at Manor Fields encompass these and seek to build children’s understanding of the diverse nature of the world and the people within it encouraging children to show respect for their world. Our curriculum aims to provoke thought about natural and human environments by ensuring children have a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human features. 

Geography lessons aim to ensure comprehensive progression of knowledge and a sequenced understanding of key concepts, whilst also developing geographical skills. We aspire to ensure that the geographical skills taught are transferrable throughout their learning at Manor Fields and in their educational future onwards.

Our core aims are:

• Children will become competent geographers who, through effective fieldwork, can collect, analyse and interpret data from a range of geographical sources.
• Children will become confident geographers who have a deep, contextual knowledge of the world and an intuitive understanding of the Earth’s physical and human features.
• Children will become ethical geographers who respectfully question each other through discussion and debate.
• Children will recognise and celebrate diversity, comparing their own life experiences and knowledge to others around the world. 

Implementation

Our overarching aim for Geography is for all children to develop a deep understanding of the world and their place in it; we wish for all children to become inquisitive, active, curious geographers. Our curriculum is designed in such a way that, during their Manor Fields journey, children will experience teaching that is designed to help learners remember the content they have been taught and integrate new knowledge within these wider concepts.

At Manor Fields, Geography is taught in blocks throughout the year. The aim of this is to ensure that children achieve depth and understanding in their learning. The key knowledge and skills of each topic have been identified and consideration has been given to ensure progression across topics throughout each year group.

Early Years provides the first opportunity to see how a child interacts with their environment and how the environment influences them. Staff follow the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Statutory Framework which aims to guide children to make sense of their physical world and their community by allowing them to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment – this is the first step of becoming a geographer.

In KS1 and KS2, teachers maintain strong links to the National Curriculum guidelines to ensure all aspects, knowledge and skills of geography are taught across all year groups. We aim to ensure this by doing the following:

• Geography lessons are planned coherently using the skills progression. They aim to build pupils’ knowledge and understanding of the world and the interaction between physical and human processes through quality first teaching. 
• Provision includes opportunities to develop geographical expertise from their local area to the wider world. This includes building children’s locational knowledge, increasing their understanding of human and physical features and developing their geographical and fieldwork techniques.
• Opportunities to develop skills and fieldwork using maps and atlases (both physical and digital) are consistently embedded. Fieldwork allows pupils to apply geographical skills in a real-life setting and explore their local area and the features within it. We develop deep subject knowledge and key skills while, as a wholly inclusive school, differentiating learning for all abilities.
• From EYFS up to the end of KS2, pupils are explicitly taught various geographical terms, relevant to both our local area and worldwide.
• Geography assessment is ongoing and actively informs teachers with planning lesson activities and differentiation; this is tracked on the termly overview.
• Lessons are planned using skills progressions so that knowledge is taught across each year group. Care is taken to ensure that skills are progressed across the key stage with explicit connections made to prior learning.

Impact

At Manor Fields, the aim of the quality first teaching in Geography is to foster a love and enthusiasm for the subject. 

Well-constructed and well-taught lessons provide pupils with opportunities to research and apply skills independently. These are skills essential for lifelong learning.  All learning builds towards clearly defined end points and at the end of each block of learning, all children complete a piece of geography-based, cross curricular writing. This allows them to demonstrate the knowledge and skills that they have learnt and developed across the unit.

We use carefully designed knowledge organisers to support children, and staff with the assessment of the impact of each unit of learning. In addition, the Geography Leader conferences with children to capture their voice and assess ‘sticky knowledge’

We aim for pupils to leave KS2 with a strong knowledge of their local area and a confidence of the location of other countries and cities around the world. Our ambition is that pupils will be able to discuss and recall a variety of events and where they happened in the world, as well as explain aspects of human and physical geography and confidently use maps and atlases (physical and digital). 

We strive to ensure that knowledge and skills will have developed progressively. This will not only enable to children to meet the requirements of the National Curriculum but also to prepare them to become competent geographers in secondary education.  We want pupils to have thoroughly enjoyed learning about geography with the aim that they will feel inspired to undertake new life experiences now and in the future.

Knowledge Organisers

Autumn Term

Spring Term

Geography in action at Manor Fields...