Geography

 

Intent 

 

At Elston Primary School, we ensure that our geography curriculum engages and excites children’s curiosity with the intention to support their development of key geographical knowledge, skills and concepts. The teaching of these have been carefully mapped out throughout the whole school using Curriculum Maestro. As the children progress through school their knowledge and key skills progress along with them. We aim to give our children an appreciation of the world around them and their place within it. We take an investigative approach to our geography lessons to allow children to develop essential characteristics of geographers such as an excellent knowledge of place with the ability to describe and compare, excellent fieldwork skills and the ability to express and evaluate their findings. Our overall aim is to inspire children to have a fascination about the world and its people. We strive to give them the curiosity to find out more. Our children find out about places, people, resources, natural and human environments as well as gain a deep understanding of the earth’s key physical and human processes. Our school is located in a rural village with opportunities for geographical learning and we take full advantage of this. We have also developed an onsite forest school and have a trained forest school practitioner to lead these sessions.   

 

Implementation

 

At Elston Primary School, all teachers plan their Geography lessons using ‘Curriculum Maestro’. This ensures all National Curriculum aims are met, children do not have any gaps within their geography learning and children are being taught the correct knowledge, skills and concepts for their key stage. In order to achieve this, we ensure: 

• Each new topic allows the children to further develop their skills from their previous topics. 
• Expectations within geography lessons are high and our teachers ensure every student makes progress and experiences success within their lessons. 
• When a geography task requires written work, we have the same expectations as we have in our English lessons in order to demonstrate the importance of geography within our whole school curriculum.  
• We ensure all children can access our geography lessons and have the most enjoyable experience they can through precise interventions such as the pre-teaching of vocabulary that could be a barrier for some children. 

Impact 

 

Our engaging and creative curriculum allows children to acquire the geographical knowledge and skills the National Curriculum requires by the end of Key Stage 2. Our children become enthusiastic geographers who want to explore the world they live in! They have both the geographical knowledge and the skills that they can apply to other areas of their learning. They will gain a deep understanding of the world we live in, their impact on our world and how they can make a difference to our planet. Looking in their books,  their knowledge and understanding is clear and progressive year on year. Teachers use formative assessment tools to ensure their judgement, of each child, in geography is accurate.

 

The children at Elston want to explore the world they live in!