St Agnes C of E (V.A.) Primary School

Geography Curriculum

A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

Our Vision Intent

At St Agnes we shape our geography curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge, skills and attitudes; and for the children to develop a love for geography.

At St Agnes, we have a high quality geography curriculum which inspires pupils curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. Our teaching equips pupils with knowledge about places and people; resources in the environment; physical and human processes; formation and use of landscapes. We also want children to develop geographical skills: collecting and analysing data; using maps, globes, aerial photographs and digital mapping to name and identify countries, continents and oceans; and communicating information in a variety of ways. We want children to enjoy and love learning about geography by improving attitudes, gaining knowledge and skills, not just through experiences in the classroom, but also with the opportunity for real-life fieldwork using the local environment as well as motivational educational visits to further enhance learning.

Implementation

In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a weekly or two weekly topic, focusing on the required knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum including the Earth’s key physical and human processes. We teach our children using a variety of resources to enable them to develop an understanding of the world around us and give them skills to question and explore and enjoy their topics.

Children in EYFS learn through a topic based curriculum that focuses on developing their knowledge and understanding of the world (Early Learning Goal). We ensure children are curious, engaged and given focused and independent activities that enhance their experience of the world from their unique perspectives.

Throughout the rest of school (Yr 1 – 6), each topic gives the children the chance to ask questions about their learning. The children have 6 or 9 ‘sticky learning’ objectives including key vocabulary that they will study and learn during the topic and hopefully these will be embedded into long term memory.

At St Agnes, we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is crucial in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences and to make sense of the world and its diverse places and people. Through our hidden curriculum the children develop skills to help them care about our world and hopefully work to make it a sustainable place to live. This can be seen in evidence from School Council initiatives, eco club, Community Cohesion (with our link school Horton Mill), Commando Joe and the Oldham Pledge work. Through our Great Expectations and Christian Values, we teach children to care about our world and learn how to work with each other to make it a better place to live. Our Eco club are committed to improving our school and local environment and making an impact in our world not just now but for the future.

Our Curriculum in Pictures

Please click on the picture link to visit our gallery illustrating how our Geography curriculum is taught.

Geography Learning Journey

Please select the document below.

Geography Learning Journey

[pdf 339KB]