Geography

Our expert, who ensures Geography strategies are linked across the school-age groups is Mrs Holmes.

Intent

At Carlton Primary School, we believe that Geography helps to provoke and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. It performs an integral role when empowering learners to become active, engaged and informed citizens who will be able to change the world as they see fit. Children are encouraged to develop greater knowledge and understanding of the world, as well as their place in it.

The Geography curriculum at Carlton enables children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and which can be used to promote their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Geography is, by nature, an investigative subject, which develops an understanding of concepts, knowledge and skills, which are all useful both inside and outside the classroom. The Geography curriculum at Carlton is enquiry based and is designed to ensure that teaching equips 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 through the school, their growing knowledge about the world helps 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 and skills at Carlton are progressive and are carefully sequenced to ensure full coverage of the framework. We seek to inspire children to show curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives, equipping them well for further education and beyond.

Implementation

The Geography curriculum at Carlton is mapped out to ensure alignment with the national curriculum content and beyond . Key knowledge and skills relate directly to and build towards the achievement of the end of Key Stage ‘end points’, informed by the National Curriculum statements for; Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography and Geographical Skills and Fieldwork. Carlton Primary School ensures that the statutory subject content requirements for the National Curriculum are met across all Key Stages. 

How we deliver and assess our curriculum: 

Children learn about their local area and compare their life in this area with that in other regions in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world. As pupils progress through school, they deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Through their growing knowledge and understanding of human geography, children gain an appreciation of life in different societies, helping to develop a sense of other cultures, and how nations rely on each other.

Before the start of each new Geography topic, the topic title is shared with the children. They are then invited to complete a project over the half term/end of term holidays prior to beginning the topic to provide the opportunity to undertake research before starting the topic. This supports children to make links to prior learning and begin to build pathways to new content which will be taught.

In each lesson, the learning objective and success criteria are shared at the beginning and reviewed at the end. These are used by the teacher during the assessment and review of children’s work and are used to identify individual target areas. Learning outside the classroom is a key feature of Geography lessons and specific activities are mapped and planned. These are progressive throughout the school and support the Geographical Skills and Fieldwork strand.

Working walls for Geography are present in all classrooms with a world map and/or globe in each classroom. The Geography working wall is used to support and celebrate learning. For the duration of each topic. Working walls at Carlton are used to support the acquisition of key knowledge and the accurate use of key vocabulary. The features of the geography working wall are: what I already know, key vocabulary, key knowledge and key questions. Early years, KS1 and KS2 refer to the world map and working wall when appropriate to address and embed wider learning and create links between prior knowledge.

Lessons at Carlton are planned to ensure that key knowledge is developed over time and over the course of each Geography topic. Key knowledge is reviewed by the children and rigorously checked and consolidated by the teacher in our ‘Rocket Retrieval’ section at the start of every lesson. This is when the children will recall knowledge from content they learnt last year, last term, last week. Formative assessments aim to assess the children’s learning on a lesson by lesson basis and are key to our curriculum. These could include observations of groups, analysis of whole class feedback, the marking of work or short tests, either in written or oral form. Teachers will use individual assessment grids at the end of every lesson to assess a child’s understanding of the learning objective taught. This will then provide teachers with a clear understanding at the end of each unit of work as to each individual child’s attainment.  

EYFS
In our Early Years at Carlton, in relation to Geography, the areas of learning are taken from ‘Understanding the World’ as part of ‘Development Matters.’

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

Monitoring

At Carlton Primary School, there is an ongoing system of monitoring which takes place throughout the academic year. Monitoring focuses specifically on the teaching and learning of geography and includes: classroom observations, discussions with staff, collecting and collating pupil voice and looking at planning and examples of children’s work. The results of monitoring inform next steps and subsequent action planning.

At the assessment points, EYFS utilise Development Matters as well as teacher judgement to assess whether the child is on track or is not on track. All school data is recorded using ‘Arbor,’ our monitoring system.

Impact

At Carlton Primary School, every child ‘let their light shine’ and we strive for our children to:

• Make progress and will meet national expectations, irrespective of background and entry points.
• Produce work that demonstrates the acquisition of the powerful knowledge relating to each subject area: locational and place knowledge, human and physical geography.
• Be curious about the world around them and will feel a moral obligation to make a positive impact upon the world.
• Believe that they are good at geography and will have the resilience required to undertake even the most challenging problem.
• Have a strong, positive sense of who they are, how they work and what inspires them.
• Develop a love of learning and are curious to learn more.
• Have high expectations of themselves and work hard to achieve.
• Believe that they ‘can do it’, even when the going gets tough.
• Express themselves clearly and confidently.
• Know that they have a lot to offer the world.
• Understand their own and other people’s points of view, beliefs and choices.
• Be creative, imaginative, problem-solvers.

Be proud of themselves, Carlton and our community

Important Documents