Curridge Primary School

Intent

Geography gives children an understanding of the world around them, its environments, places near and far, and the processes that create and affect them. Geographers study place, space and time, recognising the great differences and dynamics in cultures, political systems, economies, landscapes and environments across the world, and the links between them. Our aim is to help children to understand their world, their role in it and the responsibilities that come with it.

Former US president Barack Obama commented:

The study of geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exist across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.

• Substantive knowledge sets out the content that is to be learned. The national curriculum presents this through 4 interrelated forms:

• Locational knowledge
• Place knowledge
• Human and physical processes (the geography community also includes ‘environmental’ as part of this)
• Geographical skills.

• Disciplinary knowledge considers how geographical knowledge originates and is revised. It is through disciplinary knowledge that pupils learn the practices of geographers.

Implementation

Across the school, children will:

• Make links and connections between content and relationships (substantive and disciplinary knowledge) and so increase their geographical understanding
• Benefit from carefully sequenced learning so they know, remember and are able to do more
• Embark on a geographical education that begins in the early years and builds year on year, developing their expertise
• Learn from a curriculum that builds up knowledge; increasing their geographical expertise and ensuring they can ask and answer geographical questions
• Develop their understanding of key concepts by learning a range of relevant knowledge and skills. Key concepts have been identified as:

• Place
• Space
• Scale
• Interdependence
• Physical and human processes
• Environmental impact
• Sustainable development
• Cultural awareness
• Cultural diversity

• Pupils are increasingly able to apply generalisations to understand the world around them.
• Learn from teachers with good subject knowledge and who plan how children will build their geographical knowledge over time
• Learn content that has been broken down into component parts. When selecting that content, teachers take into account what children need based on their prior knowledge and experiences

Impact

Locational knowledge

In building pupils’ locational knowledge, we recognise that this not only helps children to identify specific features but also to:

• Build their own identity and develop their sense of place
• Develop an appreciation of distance and scale
• Learn about the orientation of the world, including references such as the continents and oceans that they can navigate from

Place knowledge

From the early years, the geography content that children learn can allow greater awareness of people, the environment, the relationships between them and the child’s place in this relationship. This sense of belonging is recognised as being significant in children’s social and emotional development as children build their place knowledge and begin to appreciate the connections between people and the physical environment.

• Place knowledge is prioritised in the geography curriculum. It brings meaning to locations and processes studied
• The curriculum and teachers’ plans build children’s knowledge of place by linking to places children already know or are familiar with. This may be from their personal experience as well as through what they have been taught
• The curriculum gives children the knowledge they need to develop an increasingly complex understanding of place
• The curriculum builds children’s place knowledge over time. This allows them to make meaningful comparisons

Environmental, physical and human geography

Knowing why a phenomenon occurs and the impacts that it has are at the core of the geography curriculum. From the early years on, it sets out how children gain knowledge of environmental, human and physical processes so they can:

• Describe their own and others’ environments
• Recognise the similarities and differences between the world around them and contrasting environments
• Understand important processes and changes in the world around them, including those affecting the land, bodies of water and the air, people, and wildlife

Geographical skills and fieldwork

Geographical skills allow children to collect, represent and interpret information. These skills are an important dimension of the geography curriculum and include the knowledge necessary to carry out fieldwork.

• Children’s geographical skills allows them to gather, analyse, present and interpret spatial information. In doing so, they are adept at identifying patterns and trends
• Children have the specific skills they need to represent and interpret geographical data
• Repeated practice of geographical skills improves children’s fluency and accuracy
• Fieldwork includes data collection, analysis and presentation. The experience of fieldwork draws together children’s locational knowledge and that of human and physical processes. It supports children to appreciate the interplay between them

EYFS

Children start on their geography education journey in Rowan Class. The  ‘people, culture and communities’ and ‘natural world’ strands in the early years framework sets out geographical knowledge that children are to learn. In other strands, there are opportunities for children to draw on geographical content. For example, they may develop their fine-motor skills when drawing plans and sketch maps. Crucially, in the early years, children begin to acquire some of the geographical vocabulary that they will build on through the rest of their schooling.