Curriculum Statement

At Rainford CE, we believe that Geography helps to provoke and answer questions about the natural and human worlds, encouraging children to build knowledge and understanding of their world and their place in it. It helps to develop a range of investigative and problem-solving skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and which can be used to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

When our pupils study the characteristics of our natural world, they build on their knowledge and understanding of geographical formations and features while nurturing their appreciation for God’s creation through awe and wonder.

Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject, which develops an understanding of concepts, knowledge and skills. We seek to inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives; to promote children’s interest and understanding about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Intent

We aim for children to:

• develop age-appropriate, accurate knowledge of the location, physical and human characteristics of a wide range of globally significant places including terrestrial and marine locations
• to use this knowledge to provide a geographical context to study and understand the actions of important geographical processes
• understand that these processes give rise to the key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about variation and change to the geographical landscape
• to be able to use geographical vocabulary which is appropriate and accurate and which develops and evolves from EYFS to KS1 and through to KS2
• collect, analyse and present a range of data, gathered through experiences of fieldwork, to deepen understanding of geographical processes
• use and interpret a wide range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes and aerial photographs
• develop skills in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) (software and interactive resources) which allow for digital mapping, analysis of data and data models
• are able to communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length
• to fulfil the requirements of the 2014 National Curriculum for Geography
• to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development helping them to have a greater understanding of their place in the world, and their rights and responsibilities to other people and the environment

Implementation

The curriculum content is sequenced to build learning over time- the content is planned and sequenced so that knowledge and skills build on prior learning and towards clearly defined end points; curriculum content supports subsequent learning: within lessons, lesson sequences, topics, years and phases curriculum; planning identifies small enough component steps; and known gaps in knowledge and skills are addressed in the sequencing of lesson content.

We have created medium-term planning with key knowledge, subject-specific vocabulary and geographical skills clearly mapped out to allow teaching to focus on delivering high-quality, interesting geography lessons which are appropriately differentiated for the needs of each class. Cross-curricular links with English, science and history are also clearly highlighted on the geography curriculum mapping to ensure that we exploit all possible opportunities to deepen learning by making those explicit links across subjects.