Geography at St Charles’ Catholic Primary School
At St Charles Catholic Primary School, we stimulate the children’s interest and understanding of the world around them. We help pupils gain knowledge and understanding of their local area and the wider world. They learn to value their own locality as well as diverse cultures from around the globe.
Intent
At St Charles, our Geography curriculum aims to inspire in our pupils a lasting curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. Many of the pupils who now attend our school will live to see the next century and inhabit a world of 11 billion people. We teach children to locate, navigate and explore geographical features. They learn to value their own locality as well as diverse cultures from around the globe. We aim to ensure that children understand their local area and its significant features. They can compare and contrast other locations around the world whilst having a good understanding of human and physical features, and are able explore these in different contexts.
Geography is an investigative subject, which relies on concepts, knowledge and skills from other curriculum disciplines. Our teaching of geography equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places and people; resources in the environment; human and physical processes; and formation and use of landscapes. Our children are the geographers of the future.
Implementation
We have adopted an enquiry based approach to teaching and learning in geography which develops our pupils as young geographers.
We use an over-arching enquiry based questions which are set at the beginning of each theme giving the hook for learning. Six way marker questions are then used to break down the knowledge and skills required to enable our children to answer the over-arching question articulately. We collaboratively plan our topics so that our lessons are sequential and our teaching underpins pupils with knowledge about places and people; resources in the environment; physical and human processes; formation and use of landscapes.
Knowledge and skills are built upon within and between each geography unit to ensure the children’s learning becomes more secure in the long term. Within each year group, the skills built upon are: map and atlas skills, fieldwork skills, compass directions, directional language. The knowledge focuses on: people and places.
Vocabulary development is pivotal in the geography curriculum at St Charles’, all people pupils are challenged to use ambitious, subject specific vocabulary, reflecting the high expectations set for them.
Within our geography curriculum we promote a love of reading and each class provides challenging and engaging materials to deepen the children’s understanding of what they have been learning about in class.
Impact
The ultimate impact and measure of our Geography curriculum is the readiness for children to learn Geography at KS3 and beyond. Outcomes in Geography books evidence a broad and balanced Geography curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge.
In line with all areas of our school curriculum, we have high expectations for all children to achieve their potential in Geography – regardless of their starting points. The Geography curriculum and assessment system at St Charles is developed to ensure that we motivate pupils, monitor progress and achieve consistently high standards.
Questioning and learning reviews are planned carefully to ensure children revisit key knowledge and concepts at regular intervals. By the end of Year 6, children will have an in-depth knowledge of the UK and its place in the wider world. Assessment information is collected frequently and analysed as part of our monitoring cycle. This process provides an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education in geography.
At St Charles Catholic Primary School, we stimulate the children’s interest and understanding of the world around them. We help pupils gain knowledge and understanding of their local area and the wider world. They learn to value their own locality as well as diverse cultures from around the globe.