Geography Curriculum Statement
Curriculum Intent
At Humberstone Infant and Junior Academies our Geography curriculum goes beyond the scope of the National Curriculum and is designed to engage and activate children’s curiosity about the world in which they live in and the people who inhabit it. This is achieved through developing children’s subject knowledge and applying learning within varied geographical contexts and experiences, helping to build cultural capital and an understanding of how the world works. The Geography curriculum provides diverse and inclusive opportunities that are challenging but accessible for all children, regardless of their ability, understanding or starting point. We aim to develop knowledge of the key human and physical processes across the globe, as well as exploring and celebrating the uniqueness, diversity and heritage of Leicester and Leicestershire.
The sequencing of the curriculum builds and links pupils’ geographical knowledge across all units of work, and develops children’s sense of place, space and scale by exploring geography at local, regional and global levels. Children’s understanding of their immediate and local Geography allows them to develop knowledge and concepts which they then apply to the wider world, extending their understanding from the familiar and concrete to the unfamiliar and more abstract. All children will undertake purposeful and contextualised geographical fieldwork in each project, in order to apply their knowledge and understand the vital importance of Geographers today. This knowledge allows the children to learn the discipline of Geography and the work of Geographers across the world, and encourages them to habitually ask their own geographical questions and learn how geographers reach answers through fieldwork.
By the end of EYFS, all children will have laid the foundations of their early geographical schemas. They continuously develop and embed their knowledge of place and space through opportunities to explore their local area, engage in map work and consider communities and festivals across the world. This builds throughout the year, and is defined through careful essential knowledge organised into Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography and Geographical skills and fieldwork in order to build seamlessly into the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculum. The children will all leave with knowledge on where they live, countries across the globe and their features, as well as a developing understanding of positional and directional language, applied through map work completed in their local area. Children enter Key Stage 1 with knowledge that they can directly link to and develop through the Key Stage 1 curriculum.
By the end of Key Stage 1, all children have built upon their geographical schemas through carefully planned geography projects and essential knowledge. Projects are designed to build on the concepts of place, space and scale through organised and clearly defined essential knowledge and working geographically objectives. Children begin by embedding their understanding and building on their knowledge of local geography, and then progress to comparing and contrasting different geographical settings across the world. They participate in more complex geographical fieldwork and utilise a wider range of maps with automaticity; vital knowledge and skills which they shall revisit and build upon in Key Stage 2.
By the end of Key Stage 2, all children leave Humberstone with an impressive command of geographical knowledge, organised and embedded through authentic geographical fieldwork. Pupils explore the physical and cultural significance of changing Geography across time, as well as contemporary issues and current events, so that they apply their knowledge in more challenging and demanding contexts. All children explore the discipline of a geographer, supported by completing carefully chosen field work in Leicestershire and beyond. They are well prepared for Key Stage 3 owing to their map automaticity and ability to analyse the constantly changing geographical landscape. Through experiences where children are able to question and liaise with geographers in the field, the children leave Humerberstone as highly knowledgeable and curious geographers, who care about the world in which we live and the people who inhabit it.
Implementation
Our Geography curriculum focuses on progressive knowledge and vocabulary across the school and is primarily delivered through projects. Each project allows the children to improve their understanding and sense of the world’s Geography, by organising and connecting information and ideas about people, places, processes and environments in depth. These carefully planned Geography-focussed projects, have a challenging and thought-provoking driving question, which provides an authentic and deliberate lens in which to view Geography and Geographical enquiry.
Prior knowledge is made clear in each project to ensure that children are retrieving and utilising previous knowledge, in order to build their Geographical schema and embed their knowledge of Geographical concepts to their long term memory. This builds into explicit and deliberate knowledge defined for each project, as well as Geographical skills and fieldwork objectives, which are clearly and rigorously planned in our fieldwork curriculum, to allow a deep understanding of the substantive concepts as well as develop their ability to work Geographically. Each project has a planned opportunity to apply the knowledge gained, through purposeful and contextualised fieldwork from within the school grounds, across Leicestershire and Derbyshire, as well as through presentations of their findings to crucial stakeholders in the field. This provides opportunities to apply the classroom-based learning to real life contexts and the wider world and apply technical vocabulary.
This application and embedding of Geographical knowledge is also supported through the use of prominently displayed classroom maps, whereby children can locate, discuss and build on their Geographical knowledge throughout the curriculum. These classroom maps provide a means for children to make connections within their expanding world and across the curriculum. Each project includes map-work, which is progressive and works in tandem with the knowledge of their project and the fieldwork they will undertake. Deliberate opportunities to use atlases, globes, thematic maps and digital mapping, alongside using locational and directional language, using aerial photographs, devising maps, and using Ordnance Survey maps, allows children to develop their locational knowledge, sense of scale and space, and the discipline of cartography.
Each project works towards a high quality final outcome, which demonstrates the knowledge and skills children have embedded. This ranges from writing non-fiction texts comparing Sherwood Forest to the Amazon Rainforest, where the children have donated towards planting trees in their name, writing informative letters to children in a school in Nairobi, creating plan view maps of Leicestershire water sources within a carefully created information leaflet used by Foxton Locks, persuasive speeches focussing on the geographical impact of buying fairtrade products, and information booklets highlighting the levels of water pollution across Leicestershire, now displayed in Bradgate Park Visitors Center.
As well as these Geography-focused projects, children’s Geographical knowledge is reviewed and applied across the curriculum, in order to continuously build their schema. For example, in English, all children explore the Geographical contexts of settings and time, to gain a contextual understanding of the text studied and the importance of literary heritage across the world . In History, children explore local history as well as world history, and how place and time interlink to result in historically and geographically significant moments, which change the physical landscape and human relationships across the world, including the rise and fall of Ancient Civilisations, the migration of the Windrush generation, and through concepts such as Invasion, Settlement and Civilisation.
Impact
Monitoring and assessment in Geography is a continuous process, whereby teachers evaluate pupils’ security of prior knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge across time and within individual projects. Assessment is underpinned by the use of an extensive project rubric, specific to each project, which breaks down the essential knowledge and Geographical skills and fieldwork objectives. This is used by teachers to ensure learning addresses misconceptions and gaps in knowledge, and informs planning, marking and questioning of pupils, so that knowledge is committed to long-term memory. It is also a tool used by pupils, to encourage self and peer assessment throughout the project.
Regular reviews of each child’s Project book enable the subject leader and Senior Leadership Team to assess progression through the geography curriculum. Specific feedback is provided to individual staff and teams, pinpointing areas that require development. These reviews particularly focus on specific groups of children such as disadvantaged pupils and those with Special Educational Needs, to ensure progression for all.
As a result of an effectively sequenced and well taught curriculum, by the end of EYFS monitoring shows that children are able to explain where they live in the world and identify features of different places. They understand the purpose of map work and have secure foundational knowledge of place and space, using the positional vocabulary stated on the curriculum map. Children leave Key stage 1 with an in-depth understanding of the essential knowledge and are able to organise and link their knowledge in order to draw geographical comparison across the world. By the end of Key Stage 2, monitoring shows that children have an in-depth understanding of the world and have the knowledge to make connections between the physical landscape, contemporary geographical issues, the discipline of a Geographer and their own experiences. Pupil voice demonstrates that children are curious and fascinated by the word and are confident to work with more complex information, including the relevance of people’s attitudes, values and beliefs. Children utilise a rich diet of maps with automaticity demonstrating their ability to explore their own locality and the physical and human geographical features of the wider world. They have comprehensive knowledge of place and space, as well as a high command of technical and subject-specific vocabulary and can articulate their knowledge for a range of audiences and purposes, which prepares them for Key Stage 3 and beyond.
The impact of our Geography curriculum and teaching is further measured through learning walks and book scrutinies, which focus on high quality teaching and learning, depth of subject knowledge and purposeful opportunities for application. Additionally, weekly project tuning meetings allow each year group to analyse planning sequences, ensuring learning is rigorous, Geography-focussed, and that the teaching of substantive knowledge and disciplinary knowledge is meticulously integrated through a purposeful Geographical context. Crucially, pupil voice and pupil outcomes allow the children to play a part in sculpting their own standpoint as geographers, which drives their curiosity and prepares them for their future in the ever changing global landscape.