At Redhill Primary Academy, we value the importance of Geography in shaping the children’s perspective of the world and moulding them into becoming global citizens. Geography is much more than just knowing where something is in the world, it is a subject which enables children to make connections between places and understand the impact of decisions across a global scale. Knowing and understanding more about locational, human and physical features supports children in having a greater awareness and understanding of themselves and the wider world. We support children in the way they enquire, make decisions over the use of sources of evidence, analyze and draw conclusions through our enquiry cycle process. Our enquiry cycle embeds children’s disciplinary knowledge through concepts such as place, space, scale, independence as well as sustainable development; cultural understanding and diversity. We aim to inspire our children to want to find out more about the world they live in, to give them the opportunity to explore alternative futures based on decisions that have been made in their lifetime and to ask and answer questions about the world they live in.
We provide a curriculum which allows children to learn at a local, regional and global scale. We ensure there is clear progression of both substantive and disciplinary knowledge across all strands of the national curriculum. Our curriculum incorporates opportunities for children to learn both inside and outside of the classroom with fieldwork being an integral part of what we offer our students so that they can make connections between the outside world and what they have learnt in the classroom. The content we have selected has been carefully planned to ensure that children have ample opportunity to revisit existing knowledge and build new knowledge alongside this. In addition to this, key concepts such as place, space, scale and interdependence are regularly revisited and embedded within our blocks. The curriculum is carefully planned to ensure systematic progression in physical and human processes, environmental interaction and sustainable development, cultural understanding and diversity. We aspire for our children to think like geographers and to observe, collect and present data to support their viewpoints of their environment. It is intended that when children leave Redhill Primary Academy, they will have developed a fascination with the world around them and will have a natural curiosity to explore other countries and cultures. This curiosity will continue to develop during their time at secondary school. Through Geography, children are able to embed our whole school values e.g. developing empathy towards events happening across the globe and how this impacts people’s lives e.g. forest fires, earthquakes. We also promote our value of responsibility and the children’s role in being global citizens of the future, who can make a positive contribution. Through the enquiry cycle, children develop their independence in the way they ask questions, make observations, draw conclusions etc.
Aims
The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:
The teaching and implementation of the Geography Curriculum is based on the National Curriculum ensuring a well-structured approach to the subject. Our Geography offer ignites children’s natural curiosity, awe and wonder of the local, national and global area. We promote a culture of collaboration and an environment where children are no afraid to make predictions or ask questions.
Detailed long and medium planning is in place to ensure engaging curriculum content and systematic revisiting of key concepts and bodies of knowledge to deepen learning. Throughout each block of study, teachers carefully plan to embed and assess the children’s knowledge through the use of a range of retrieval strategies. These include extended writes, quizzes, knowledge organisers and self and peer assessment. We ensure application of knowledge in various contexts, adapting lessons where necessary so that children develop schemas and both substantive and disciplinary knowledge is stored in the long-term memory.
Our detailed units of work and lesson plans follow our school humanities enquiry cycle which supports children in developing well embedded disciplinary knowledge. It does this by systematically and frequently putting the children in situations where they have to ask questions, exploring sources of evidence and draw conclusions to support their future thinking.
Assessment takes place throughout each unit of work and teachers track progress and attainment against the National Curriculum expectations and the knowledge and skills progression documents. Teachers use this information to inform future lessons; ensuring children are supported and challenged appropriately
The children’s achievements are celebrated on their End of Year report to parents. Here judgements are made on their effort, achievement, and progress within history.
Children in Foundation Stage have their progress tracked using the EYFS curriculum. Age related expectation levels are reported to parents at the end of the reception year.To view our subject overview for geography, please click here.
By the end of each key stage 2, pupils will: