Geography
“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 exists across continents. And in the end, it's about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.”
Barack Obama
The geography curriculum at Stanton Road has been designed to enable children to develop their knowledge and appreciation of their place in our dynamic and ever-changing world. We want our children to think like geographers and be in awe and wonder of our earth. It will prepare our children for their role as citizens of a 21st century world and provide them with the essential skills to become global citizens with an awareness of current world environmental issues and events. With this knowledge and understanding of their role, we aim to engage our children to develop the passion and confidence to tackle current issues. Our teaching will provide children with the knowledge and understanding of key vocabulary and terminologies about diverse places, people, resources, natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Through our curriculum, we will seek answers to fundamental questions such as:
Where is this place?
What is it like? (and why?)
How and why is it changing?
How does this place compare with other places?
How and why are places connected?
We aim to inspire the children to appreciate the beauty of their semi-rural locality whilst also broadening their horizons and providing them with knowledge and experiences of landmarks, lifestyles and cultures that are not always encountered in our immediate setting. Geography at Stanton Road, ensures children develop their knowledge of their local area (Local), the UK( National)and the wider world (Global). The teaching of geography follows the National Curriculum and uses resources from both the Geographical Association and Royal Geographical Society to ensure that lessons are high quality, comprehensive and progressive throughout the school. Throughout each unit of work, children will Investigate places, investigate patterns and communicate geographically.
The curriculum is sequenced to ensure that key strands of geography are developed throughout a child’s time at Stanton Road, starting in F2 by building on from the Early Learning Goal- Understanding the World. In their time in Early Years, children will make sense of their physical world and their community by exploring, observing, and finding out about people, places, technology and the environment.
As children progress through the year groups, they will build upon their previously learnt knowledge and skills to develop their understanding of the Earth, its interconnected human and physical landscapes, and the processes that develop and drive these interactions. Units of work will be centred around enquiry questions, which seek to provide answers through a series of lessons, to gain knowledge of where things are found, why they are there, and how they develop and change over time.
As part of all geography lessons, children will retrieve and build upon prior knowledge from both former lessons and previous years (where knowledge is built on previous learning). New vocabulary will be shared with children and previous vocabulary is revised. Subsequently, children develop new knowledge and further develop skills and apply these into a range of geographical collaborative and independent tasks. At the end of a unit of work, children will complete an end of unit check to retrieve their knowledge.
At Stanton Road, we use our school grounds and surrounding area give children the opportunity to extend their learning outside of the classroom when possible. We value the importance of fieldwork to help children to respect and understand their immediate environment and setting.
Children will record their learning in a variety of ways, within geography books. Evidence of the learning is dependent on the lesson outcome, year group and the knowledge and skills being developed. This can be in the form of extended writing, photographs of fieldwork and other geographical activities or comments relating to the learning.
Assessment
Teachers assess children’s learning throughout each lesson to ensure understanding of skills and knowledge before building onto future learning. Teachers use a range of questioning and retrieval practice to assess children against the aims of the lesson. In addition, children will also complete end point assessments at the end of each unit to assess their substantive and disciplinary knowledge.
Curriculum Champions
The Geography curriculum champion will conduct regular evaluations of our Geography Curriculum, which include lesson drop ins, pupil panels and book looks to measure the impact of our teaching, by assessing whether our children know more and can remember more.