Geography
Intent
Our intent is to inspire, equip and deepen children’s understanding of the world and the people who live there. At St. Peter’s, our Geography curriculum is built around Chris Quigley’s essentials curriculum and the Geographical Association recommendations. We aim to help pupils build long-term memories in geographical concepts, in knowledge, in vocabulary and most importantly, how these all come together to form a conceptual system called a schema. Through our curriculum, we take a progressive approach to teaching Geography where each year group builds upon previous disciplinary knowledge and understanding. A minimum of two practical geographical fieldwork sessions are planned for each year group which will compliment children’s theoretical knowledge in order to create geographers who can seek answers to geographical questions and find ways to answer them by applying their knowledge and skills.
Implementation
At St. Peter’s, we implement a high-quality Geography curriculum by using threshold concepts (investigating places, investigating patterns and communicating geographically) and milestones. Threshold concepts are the big ideas which underpin Geography:
- investigating places– geographical location, physical features, human features
- investigating patterns - relationship between physical and human features, natural resources
- communicating geographically - vocabulary, techniques, representations, mapping
Our children have opportunities throughout each year and Key Stage for spaced repetition of these concepts and key facets of knowledge. Over time, they will also understand how the concepts and knowledge interact and interleave together. The Geography curriculum starts in EYFS and builds both in scale, knowledge and skills up to Year 6 covering local, national and international geography, physical and human geography and practical fieldwork. Our Geography curriculum requires each year group to work towards end points known as milestones. Milestones are goals pupils should reach at the end of a two-year period (Milestone 1 – Years 1 & 2, Milestone 2 - Years 3 & 4 and Milestone 3 – Years 5 & 6). Each goal aims to give children the knowledge, vocabulary and techniques they need to enrich their understanding of what is going on around them and ensure they are prepared for their next stage of education. Throughout the year, teachers ask children to retrieve previously learnt content to ensure that they are retaining earlier knowledge and are able to apply this learning theoretically or practically. Through regular quizzes and questioning and frequent POP (proof of progress) tasks, teachers ensure children know more and remember more.
Impact
Our high-quality Geography curriculum with its clear intent and implementation, regular retrieval of previous learning and POP tasks, provides the children at St. Peter’s with all the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to enable them to become passionate guardians of our planet and those that live upon it.