Compassion, Courage, Justice
Jesus said, "Go and do the same."
Intent
At Monkton Church of England Primary School, will ensure that our geography curriculum engages and excites children’s curiosity with the intention to support their development of key geographical knowledge, skills and concepts. The teaching of these have been carefully mapped out through our whole school cross- curricular approach to learning. As the children progress throughout the school their knowledge and key skills progress along with them. We aim to give our children an appreciation of the world around them and their place within it. We take an investigative approach to our geography lessons to allow children to develop essential characteristics of geographers such as an excellence knowledge of place with the ability to describe and compare, excellent fieldwork skills and the ability to express and evaluate their findings. Our overall aim is to inspire children to have a fascination about the world and its people. We strive to give them the curiosity to find out more. Our children find out about places, people, resources, natural and human environments as well as gain a deep understanding of the earth’s key physical and human processes. Our school is located in a rural village with a vast amount of opportunities for geographical learning and we take full advantage of this. We take local trips as well as venturing further afield to broaden our children’s geographical knowledge and to allow them the opportunities to use their geographical skills such as fieldwork in a variety of real-life contents. We have also developed an onsite forest school.
Implementation
At Monkton, all teachers plan their lessons from our cross- curricular curriculum taken from ‘Curriculum Maestro’. This ensures all National Curriculum aims are met, children do not have any gaps within their geography learning and children are being taught the correct knowledge, skills and concepts for their key stage. In order to achieve this, we ensure:
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Geography topics are taught in blocks periods that normally last about a term.
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Each new topic allows the children to further develop their skills from their previous topics.
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At the beginning of each new topic children revisit a previously taught piece of knowledge or skill in order to ensure they are developing their long-term memory and their ‘sticky’ knowledge.
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Lessons are taught with a big focus on key vocabulary. This is modelled by all staff and the key vocabulary is easily assessible to all children within their classrooms. Children are encouraged to use this language themselves once learnt.
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We use ‘Digimaps’ which is an interactive programme that allows the children to explore maps all over the world.
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Expectations within geography lessons are high and our teachers ensure every student makes progress and experiences success within their lessons.
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Children are introduced to a variety of historical resources and enquiry-based learning is conducted.
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When a geography task requires written work, we have the same expectations as we have in our English lessons in order to demonstrate the importance of history within our whole school curriculum.
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We ensure all children can access our geography lessons and have the most enjoyable experience that they can through precise interventions such as the pre-teaching of vocabulary that could be a barrier for some children.
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Our school learning values underpin everything we do in our geography learning. We allow the children to be: Positive, Resourceful, Innovative, Determined and Engaged.
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Formative and summative assessment is used to track all pupils on Arbor based on NC statutory guidance.
Impact
Our engaging and creative curriculum allows children to acquire the geographical knowledge and skills the National Curriculum requires by the end of Key Stage 2. Our children become enthusiastic geographers who are left with the skills to participate in effective fieldwork, undertake geographical enquiry and evaluate their conclusions. They are able to carry on using these vitals skills to further their future learning. By the end of their primary years our children have built up a strong knowledge of the world which has given them an appreciation for all its wonders. They understand their place within the world and the importance of protecting it. They have the confidence to express their own views for the future. The evidence within our books, pupil voice, assessments and the children’s overall positive attitudes towards their geography learning demonstrates this.
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