Christ Church Pellon C of e VC Primary School

Your new design will be uploaded in:
...
Please contact Delivery Team on
0113 3200 750 if you have any queries.
X

Geography

Intent

Our curriculum for geography aims to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Through a high quality geography education, our children will gain knowledge and deepen their understanding of the diversity of natural and human environments, and the interaction between people, places and resources. As far as possible, our geography topics are linked to experiences, such as fieldwork, visits and outside experts coming into the classroom to share their knowledge, to further embed the learning.

The intent is to create environmentally conscious 21st century global citizens, by connecting them with nature, building their knowledge of sustainable living and motivating others to do the same. The future of all life depends on the next generation gaining the knowledge, skills and passion for nature necessary to build a more sustainable future.

To this end, woven through each year’s geography topics are the threads of current and future world challenges such as global warming, deforestation, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, flooding, overfishing, logging, land clearance, plastic pollution, as well as natural disasters: earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, landslides and avalanches. All of these threads are brought together and revisited in Year 6, when they study natural and manmade disasters and start exploring some of the solutions put forward by young people (e.g. Boyan Slat – Ocean Clean Up, Greta Thunberg – Climate Activist) and the pivotal role they themselves can play today in fighting for all our futures on Planet Earth.

In view of this, we feel that a well-rounded geographical education would be incomplete without the children learning about the oceans themselves, which cover over 7/10 of the Earth’s surface and provide 99% of the world’s living space. In Year 4, they learn that the oceans contain the highest mountains and the deepest trenches and they are crucial for our climate, food and nutrition.

Our overall aims for the curriculum are to ensure that all pupils:

  • develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
  • understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
  • are competent in the geographical skills needed to: collect, analyze and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
  • interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  • communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

Implementation

At Christ Church we recognise the need to embed learning by revisiting and recalling previously learned knowledge at the start of each new topic. This is further emphasised by the Knowledge Organisers that go home with each child prior to the new topic, detailing the links to previous learning, the key vocabulary and the sticky knowledge that we wish to gain during that particular topic. The Knowledge Organisers are also stuck in the front of their books and referred to throughout the topic teaching.

Children will develop their locational and place knowledge, and deepen their understanding of human and physical geography, through studying a range of topics:

In KS1 the children learn about their locality (Our Local Area; Hebden Bridge), the UK (Town, Country & Seaside; UK Cities & Countries), the world (Hot & Cold Places; Australia).

In KS2 the children learn more about their locality and the UK (UK counties [West Yorkshire]; The UK – who we are; UK rivers [River Calder]; Whitby; Natural & Manmade Disasters [Flooding in Calder Valley], and physical and human aspects of the wider world (South America - Rainforests; Living in the Freezer; St Lucia – Earthquakes & Volcanoes; Oceans; Kenya; Europe including Russia; Mountains; North America; Natural & Manmade Disasters).

The theme of sustainability runs through both key stages, with the environmental issues relevant to that topic clearly flagged, culminating in a more detailed examination of the key environmental issues of today in Year 6.

Curriculum Policies

To see all of our policies concerning the curriculum click the link below:

Curriculum Policies

Name
 Geography Enquiry skills fieldwork overview.pdfDownload
 Geography Long Term Plan.pdfDownload
 Geography Progression of Skills Knowledge.pdfDownload
Showing 1-3 of 3