Geography is the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments.

Leader: Suzanne Mustill 

Intent

At Frimley, we aim to inspire children to become curious and explorative thinkers with a diverse knowledge of the world who think like geographers. We want them to develop an awareness of how geography shapes our lives and to encourage them to become resourceful, global citizens with the knowledge and skills to contribute to and improve the world around them.

Our geography curriculum has a strong focus on developing geographical skills and knowledge. It encourages critical thinking and provides children with the ability to ask perceptive questions and to explain and analyse evidence. It develops fieldwork skills across each year group. Additionally, it aims to develop a deep interest and knowledge of areas local and familiar to them and an understanding of how these differ from other areas of the world. As they progress through KS2, children’s understanding of geographical concepts, terms and vocabulary will grow.

Our geography curriculum enables children to meet the end of Key Stag 2 attainment targets in the National Curriculum whilst also providing opportunities for them to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas.

Implementation

• We use a mastery-based curriculum that is progressive and broken into modules.
• Teachers deploy the Rosenshine principles to support the teaching and learning process: reviews of previous learning, new information is presented in small steps, high-level questioning, carefully considered models, guided practice, checks for pupil understanding, obtainment of a high success rate, scaffolds for difficult tasks, opportunities for independent practice and reviews of learning over extended periods. 
• Skills and knowledge for the 4 National curriculum strands - Locational knowledge, Place knowledge, Human and physical geography and Geographical skills and fieldwork – are taught progressively throughout children’s KS2 journey. The key concepts are woven across all units.
• Essential knowledge and skills are revisited with increasing complexity – this allows children to revise and build on their previous learning.
• Locational knowledge is reviewed in each unit to consolidate children’s understanding key concepts such as scale and place.
• Cross-curricular links are incorporated into each unit, promoting the importance of making connections across different areas of learning.
• Units are organised around a subsumer in the form of an enquiry-based question – children gain a secure understanding of geographical knowledge and skills by applying them to answer these open-ended enquiry questions.
• Through answering the enquiry questions, children learn how to collect, interpret and represent data using geographical methodologies and make informed decisions by applying the geographical knowledge.
• Every unit contains elements of geographical skills and fieldwork following an enquiry cycle that maps out the fieldwork process of question, observe, measure, record and present, reflecting the elements mentioned in the National curriculum. This ensures that they are practised often.
• The school environment and local area are used for fieldwork and to investigate physical and human features; this helps to ensure fieldwork is regular and accessible and provides a solid foundation for comparing children’s locality with other places.
• Teaching and learning approaches in geography are varied to ensure lessons are engaging and meaningful.
• Lessons will provide opportunities for children to make connections to a big picture or previous learning, to encounter new knowledge and skills, to demonstrate understanding by applying new knowledge and skills and to consolidate their learning. 
• End of unit assessments are used to assess the children’s understanding of crucial content; this informs future teaching and areas of focus for retrieval.
• Links to careers in the geography field are made to show how children’s learning links to the wider world of work.
• As well as learning walks to observe teaching and learning, the Book Study approach is used to monitor the effectiveness of the geography curriculum, teaching and learning, to identify strengths and areas for development in provision and to garner pupil voice.

Impact

Children will:

• Compare and contrast human and physical features and understand similarities and differences between various places in the UK, Europe and the Americas.
• Name, locale and understand where and why the physical elements of tour world are located and how they interact, including processes over time relating to climate, biomes, natural disasters and the water cycle.
• Understand how humans use land for economic and trading purposes, including how the distribution of natural resources has shaped this.
• Develop an appreciation for how humans are impacted by and have evolved around the physical geography surrounding them and how humans have had an impact on the environment, both positive and negative.
• Develop a sense of location and place around the UK and some areas of the wider world using the eight-points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and keys on maps, globes, atlases, aerial photographs and digital mapping.
• Identify and understand how various elements of our globe create positioning, including latitude, longitude, the hemispheres, the tropics and how time zones work, including night and day.
• Present and answer their own geographical enquiries using planned and specifically chosen methodologies, collected data and digital technologies.
• Demonstrate a secure understanding of a unit’s crucial learning, skills and knowledge in the end of unit assessment.
• Understand how their learning in geography links to the wider world of work.
• Meet the relevant end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for geography at the end of Key stage 2.