Geography
A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching should equip 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, their growing knowledge about the world should help 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, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.
Purpose of Study, Geography National Curriculum, 2014
At Christchurch Junior School our Geography curriculum has been developed to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum, ensuring it is fully inclusive to every child. We aim for all children to develop an understanding of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills as well as a love for geography.
Intent
The Geography curriculum at CJS is broad and balanced. It aims to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, encouraging pupils to be inquisitive, solve problems and develop a greater understanding of their world and their place in it. Many of the skills taught in our Geography lessons are transferable to other curriculum areas and can be used to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.
We aim to equip pupils with knowledge about places and people; natural resources; physical and human processes; formation and use of landscapes. This is achieved through different teaching methods, collecting and analysing data; using maps, globes, aerial photographs and digital mapping.
We want our children to enjoy and love learning about Geography, communicating learned information in a variety of ways both through experiences in the classroom and educational visits.
Implementation
At CJS we maintain high teaching standards in Geography and aim to implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught in each year group through a variety of topics focusing on the knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. By blocking our topic units on a half-termly basis, we are able to fully submerse the children in the aspect of Geography they are studying, incorporating this into other subjects from Literacy and Maths to Art and PSHRE. We feel it is important for children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences in their learning. To do this, we offer a number of off site visits, visitors and home learning projects to support our class based teaching of Geography.
Examples of this cross-curricular teaching and wider learning opportunities can be seen on each year group’s termly overview by following the link below:
Impact
We want our children to gain an in-depth and coherent understanding of all aspects of Geography taught, whether these are the acquisition and development of geographical skills or the retention of key facts about the world around them; both of which are important for adult life.
Transferability of skills is key, not only within an educational institution, but also to harness the many opportunities that will arise in our learners’ lives. Therefore the impact and measure of this is to ensure that children at CJS are equipped with the geographical skills and knowledge that will prepare them to undertake new life experiences.
Throughout their time at CJS, pupils will (among other things):
- Produce models and designs linked to geographical processes
- Use computer technology such as PowerPoint to present facts they have researched
- Work collaboratively and/or independently to research and present learning based on different countries
- Take part in active fieldwork data collection offsite and relating to the local area
- Use geographical skills, such as map and compass reading in a real life situation.
