Geography
At Travis Geography is valued through stewardship and having a love for the beautiful world in which we live. We would like children to have a secure understanding of their own locality as well as the wider world that God has created for us.
Intent
The teaching of Geography at Travis encourages our children to have curiosity and inquisitiveness about the world in which they live, whilst comparing and contrasting features. We want all children to have a good understanding of their own locality and be proud of the area in which they live.
By promoting the idea of stewardship and linking our duties to God, children will learn about the global issues their generation and generations to come will face and the impact that humans have on the world. In turn, this will also promote their cultural, moral and social development. Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject, therefore our curriculum aims to provoke questions about, and to deepen their understanding of, the Earth’s key physical and human processes, and to instill a sense of environmental responsibility at a local and global level. We encourage children to research and explore key themes to enable them to answer some of their own questions.
Through high quality teaching, our aim is to develop the following essential characteristics of geographers:
- An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are like, including significant geographical interests there, locally, nationally and globally.
- A comprehensive understanding of the ways in which places are independent and interconnected.
- An extensive base of geographical vocabulary.
- Fluency in geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills.
- The ability to reach clear conclusions and explain their findings.
- Excellent field word skills that can be carried out independently.
- The ability to express well-balanced opinions, rooted in very good knowledge and understanding about current issues in society and the environment.
- To be able to apply and use disciplinary and substantive knowledge taught in Geography, across the curriculum.
- To be able to use a variety of maps.
- To have a realistic viewpoint of the current global issues relevant to their generation and generations to come.
Implementation
The National Curriculum forms the basis for our Geography teaching in Key Stages One and Two Geography. Therefore, lessons are structured to cover the disciplinary and substantive knowledge required in order to meet the aims of the national curriculum as well as any specific local area knowledge that we perceive as important as a school.
Foundation Stage planning for Knowledge and Understanding of the World shows how we engage our Reception children in early geographical learning experiences. Planning is based on the Whole School Plan and is progressive each year. It is broken down into the following areas; Locational knowledge, Place knowledge, Human and Physical features, Fieldwork, Interpretation of geographical knowledge and Communicating geographical information.
Teachers plan activities based on one main topic per term, and links are made to other curriculum areas and our core values as often as possible. The topics have been organised to provide progression of knowledge in relation to knowledge and the development of key disciplinary and substantive knowledge. This is particularly evident in pupils’ progressive understanding of location and place, which builds from local to global. Other aspects such as map skills are built up progressively. Visiting experts and trips off site are organised when we feel that they can enhance the learning process.
Impact
By the end of their education at Travis our learners will have gained a broad and balanced body of geographical knowledge and a wide range of transferable disciplinary and substantive knowledge. We aspire for children to have the knowledge to explore, understand and navigate the world around them as well as knowing how they fit into it. We hope that our children become citizens who choose to reflect on how they can help protect and shape the world around them.
The impact of our curriculum is measured in terms of the extent to which pupils have developed new knowledge, understanding and skills and that they can use and recall this with fluency.
In Geography, this will be measured by:
- Assessment tasks and regular knowledge check activities.
- In school attainment tracking.
- Children assessing their own understanding at the end of each lesson by reviewing their success against the learning objective.
- The ability to ask questions and have discussions.
- Subject leader book/ learning
Schemes of Work
To ensure that children at Travis experience a progressive teaching of Geography, two schemes of work are used and adapted to suit the needs of our children. The schemes include the Geography units from Grammarsaurus and Focus Education.
Please click on this link to access an example of a Focus Knowledge organiser.
Please see below the Grammarsaurus progression document.
We also use Digimap to enhance our map reading disciplinary knowledge and our substantive knowledge of the world.
We ensure that our curriculum fully follows the National Curriculum. Please click on the image to access the National Curriculum Document.
Useful geography links
https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/teacher-category/geography/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z2f3cdm
https://www.geography.org.uk/teaching-resources/early-years-and-primary-resources
www.geography-map-games.com/
https://www.scoilnet.ie/primary/theme-pages/geography/