St Edward’s are pleased to announce that we have been awarded the Gold standard for Geography by the Geographical Association. We are beyond proud to be one of only 103 schools in the UK to be awarded this!

Geography is the study of the world around us. We learn about people and places as well as culture and traditions of different places. We also learn about our environment.

Geography is about curiosity, exploration, and discovery. It gives children the power to see places in new ways, even imaginary ones. Geography also helps children to understand and make sense of the world.

Intent of Geography in St Edwards –

In St Edward’s we are passionate about ensuring that our pupils are given geography education at the highest standard. Through high quality teaching and learning experiences and targeted intervention and support, we aim to ensure that all pupils are able to enjoy, aspire achieve and become independent and lifelong learners.

Our Geography curriculum is knowledge rich. This means the knowledge children will gain has been carefully specified, ordered coherently and builds over time. As children work through our geography curriculum they will know more, understand more about the world around them. A good geographical understanding relies on firm foundations of knowledge and skills. The skills our curriculum develops, like the knowledge, are specified, ordered coherently and progress over time. This curriculum structure helps pupils to deepen their understanding of physical and human geographical processes, fostering curiosity and fascination for the world we live in. Conceptual understanding is at the heart of our curriculum. Children will learn about key geographical concepts such as place, space, the environment and interconnection. Over time, working through an essential process of elaboration, children will add to their conceptual understanding with many examples of geographical knowledge in context. Children will become more skilled at answering questions such as; what is it like to live in this place? What are the challenges of this environment? How have people changed this landscape over time? Children will gain an understanding of what geographers do, what they look for and what they may say about a place. At St Edwards we strive to nurture future geographers by developing their skills of curiosity, exploration, and discovery. Our curriculum will allow our children to see places in new ways, even imaginary ones. Geography will also help to develop children who understand and make sense of our world. It will help our children develop their experience of our local area and the wider world.

Implementation

The Geography curriculum at St Edward’s in primarily. When devising our Geography curriculum, we wanted it to drive academic excellence, encourage pupils to develop a desire to succeed no matter what their background, support their transition whether going from EYFS toKS1 or Year 6 to KS3. And to develop a life-long love of learning.

St Edwards Geography curriculum is knowledge rich, challenging and well sequenced allowing for the progression of knowledge and the application of skills across the school and into other subjects. The content has been chosen carefully in a coherent way ensuring it builds from year to year allowing children to remember more.

The Geography curriculum is coherent ensuring teaching and learning does not jump from topic to topic. The Geography curriculum is divided into topics incorporating the four key areas as well as key vocabulary and progresses sequential from year to year. Topics are delivered in an engaging and creative way to ensure a love of geography.

The Geography curriculum along with all subjects in the curriculum is full of rich and broad vocabulary, which is taught and used explicitly.

Our EYFS curriculum encourages children to explore, investigate and learn through first hand experiences. The stimulating learning environment encourages play and investigation of the world around them. Again children in EYFS are immersed in a rich, new vocabulary in order for children to communicate their understanding effectively. The Statutory Framework for Early Years Foundation Stage gives the children a broad range of knowledge and skills, which provides the pupils with a strong base for future development of Geography knowledge and understanding.

The national curriculum is taught from Year 1 to Year 6. Comprehensive subject planning ensures the Geography provision is broad and balanced. Knowledge and skills are layered for each year group and each year builds on the last without unnecessary duplication. The Geography subject overview, rationales for Geography content, long term planning and half termly plans allow for a clear sequence of lessons with a clear application of geography skills to ensure they are embedded.

St Edwards includes Geography fieldwork whenever applicable Geography fieldwork involves leaving the classroom in order to learn though first-hand experience, by observing and asking questions of and in the real world. The wide benefits of fieldwork are well recognised, they include the inspiration that comes through memorable school experiences, the opportunities for developing practical skills and working within a team, as well as increased independence, confidence and the ability to deal with risk and uncertainty. Fieldwork is therefore one of the ways in which St Edward’s encouragers their geographers create valuable knowledge about the world and one of the means by which we teach young people to become geographers, rather than just teaching them about the subject.

St Edwards enhances the curriculum with a thematic approach to learning. This allows children to extend their knowledge and understanding as well as exciting and engaging the children. It gives children the opportunities to suggest to suggest learning content. These themes are incorporated into the long-term planning -themes such as “Where do our CAFOD pennies go?”, “Lovely Linthorpe” and “World Cup” allow for a whole school approach to learning, evidences progress of understanding and extends their knowledge in the context of the wider world.

Coverage is monitored through plans, scrutiny of books, curriculum days to moderate and observe Geography to ensure a progression of explicit skills for every year group. Formative assessment is ongoing through probing questioning in lessons, pupil discussions and staff discussions and books.

Impact

Academic progress and personal development are treated equally and pupils make progress from their starting points. Children retain and are able to articulate knowledge and understanding. Statutory outcomes and progress over time in St Edwards is above national average. A clear, coherent and sequential Geography curriculum is established with clear learning intentions and personalised lessons for each pupil and their starting point. The Geography curriculum is enhanced by using educational trips to develop field-working skills, amongst others, to motivate children and to deepen and retain knowledge.

Our overarching aim is that we enrich children with a Geography curriculum that excites and motivates our pupils. A curriculum which encourages pupils to become responsible global citizens with a knowledge and understanding of the physical, human and social world around them.  We want children who are prepared and equipped with Geographical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at Key Stage 3 and for life as a responsible, ecologically aware adult in the wider world.

Each year our geography curriculum begins with a ‘Spatial Sense’ unit that explicitly teaches geographical skills such as locating places on a map, positioning items on a map, using symbols in a key, interpreting scale, reading climate graphs, identifying locations using co-ordinates, interpreting population data, identifying elevation on relief maps and more. The spatial sense units for each year group are positioned at the beginning of the year to explicitly teach skills which will then be used in context throughout the rest of the year as children apply those skills to learn more about people, places and the environment. The spatial sense units build on prior knowledge before moving children on as the level of challenges increases from year to year. In Key Stage One the Spatial Sense units require children to undertake fieldwork and use observational skills to study the geography of their school and the surrounding environment. In Year 5 children will study a further unit on local geography where they undertake fieldwork to observe, record and present the human and physical features in the local area, focussing on an issue that the local area faces. The aim of the spatial sense units is to build children’s geographical literacy so that they are able to use an atlas, maps and geographical data with ease to answer questions they may have about the world.