Intent

At Higham, we encourage a love for geography. We intend to deliver high quality lessons, which ensure that our pupils have covered the skills required to meet the aims of the Early Years Foundation Stage and the National Curriculum. The content we provide throughout the key stages, allows for a comprehensive, deeper understanding of the four key areas of geography identified in the National Curriculum. We intend for the geography curriculum to develop their knowledge of places both locally and in the wider world and understanding of the key physical and human geographical features, along with how they bring about variation and change over time. We are passionate as a team to develop children’s inquisitiveness and develop an interest of the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. We aim to improve children’s geographical vocabulary, map skills and geographical facts. Through our well-designed curriculum we intend to provide opportunities for consolidation, challenge and variety to ensure interest and progress in the subject.

Implementation

In the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), children begin to develop an awareness of the world around them by exploring their immediate environment, noticing features of places, and talking about similarities and differences. Through the ELGs for Understanding the World, they learn about people, culture, communities, and the natural world, developing curiosity and observational skills. Building on this, in KS1 children start to use maps and recognise physical and human features relating to Higham, London, and the wider world. They continue to develop these skills by exploring continents and oceans and learning about the features of the United Kingdom. During this stage, they also begin to ask and answer geographical questions. As they move into KS2, map skills are developed further through the use of digital maps, advanced keys and symbols, and opportunities to improve fieldwork techniques. Through revisiting and consolidating skills, we endeavour for the children to build on prior knowledge alongside introducing new skills, vocabulary and challenge. All children expand on their skills in local knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography, geographical skills and fieldwork. Across both key stages, children have a variety of opportunities to experience geography through practical engaging tasks beyond the classroom. In our lessons teachers will use a range of assessment strategies so that all children can demonstrate the progression of skills and knowledge and that outcomes have been met. Key vocabulary is also discussed and displayed in the classrooms, to be used by all children to deepen their geographical knowledge.

Impact

We believe that the impact of our geography curriculum is that geography will be valued by all children across school, teachers will have higher expectations and work presented in books will be of a high quality. Teachers will develop strong subject knowledge, feel confident in the curriculum content that they are teaching and will also have a clearer understanding of the progression of skills across the key stages. Our children will use geographical vocabulary precisely and understand the different strands of geography, with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Children will begin to make relevant links from geography to other curriculum subjects, such as history and science. They will improve their enquiry skills and inquisitiveness about the world around them. All children will realise that the choices they make have an impact on the wider world and will develop a positive commitment to the environment and the future of our planet. Children will become competent in collecting, analysing and communicating a range of data gathered. They will be able to interpret a range of sources of geographical information and they will present this in a variety of ways. All children in the school will be able to speak confidently about their geography learning, skills and knowledge.