At Lord Street, we want our children to think like geographers and be in awe and wonder of our Earth.  The teaching of geography is vital to develop life-long learners who seek to maximise the use of resources in their environment; to minimise the impact of their actions and seek to develop an understanding of the world they live in. This will be achieved using enquiry questions, which aim to provide answers to the understanding of where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.  As a result, they should be able to engage with current issues surrounding changes to the world they inhabit.

Our teaching will provide children with the knowledge and understanding of key vocabulary and terminologies about diverse places, people, resources, natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

It is a subject that seeks answers to fundamental questions such as:

• Where is this place?
• What is it like? (and why?)
• How and why is it changing?
• How does this place compare with other places?
• How and why are places connected?

Geography draws on its vast range of vocabulary to identify and name places, the features within them and the human and physical processes at work there. Such core knowledge provides the building blocks of deeper explanation and understanding, providing entry points to geographical conversations about the world. We describe this as ‘thinking geographically’ and explicitly teach this to our pupils.

 

Our aim is to start our children’s geography journey right from the very start of their reception year by building on from the Early Learning Goals of Understanding the World.

In their time in Early Years, children will make sense of their physical world and their community by exploring, observing, and finding out about people, places, technology and the environment. Children will have talked about the lives and roles of people around them. They will begin to look at their local area on welly walks around the school grounds and at Forest School. In addition, children are encouraged to share postcards and pictures from places they have visited and begin to ask geographical questions.

In Year 1 children build on the EYFS Understanding of the World, finding out about people, places and the world around us. The children learn about their immediate locality so they learn about places around our school and grounds.

Each year group learns about three different areas of geography: Local, National and Global.

Within each of those units there are enquiry questions and key concepts which underpin the key knowledge and skills. The curriculum progresses through skills, knowledge and vocabulary. Each year group carries out fieldwork, which is progressive and develops practical skills such as data collection, observation and analysis. KS2 in particular, learn how to use 4-6-digit grid references and digital mapping software within their lessons. All year groups use a range of locational resources; maps and Ordnance Survey maps, globes and progressive atlases to enhance their learning journey.

Children organise their knowledge, skills and understanding around the following learning:

Investigate places

Investigate patterns

Communicate geographically

These key concepts underpin learning in each year group. This enables children to reinforce and build upon prior learning, make connections and develop subject specific language.

 

Evidence

At Lord Street, children have the opportunity to record their learning in a variety of ways, which is recorded within their geography exercise books (KS1 and KS2). Evidence of the learning is dependent on the lesson outcome, year group and the knowledge and skills being developed. This can be in the form of writing, fieldwork and other geographical activities relating to the learning. 

Assessment

Teachers assess children’s learning throughout each lesson to ensure understanding of skills and knowledge before progressing further. Teachers use a range of formative assessment, through the use of questioning and retrieval practise to assess children against the aims of the lesson. At the end of each term, summative assessments are conducted on the learning that has been taught for that term to ensure the embedding of substantive and disciplinary knowledge.

Subject Leaders

Subject leaders will regularly monitor Geography throughout school by conducting learning walks, pupil and teacher interviews and book looks to measure the impact of our teaching. Deep dives will also take place to continuously quality assure Geography across school.

Subject leaders will meet with their counterparts from other trust schools and will moderate the work and monitoring outcomes from their setting to ensure that standards are exceeding the expectations.