Geography at Northbrook Primary Academy is led by Miss Jackson
Our Curriculum Drivers
HEART Values – Through our geography curriculum we aim to build on children’s values as they broaden their knowledge of the diverse communities and differing landscapes of our planer. We aim to build an empathy and understanding of not just our own communities, but those around the world.
Literacy and Language – Our geography learning is linked to a range of our core texts to help add a love of reading into the subject. Also, we use stem sentences to build our geographical knowledge and practice using geographical terminology in every geography session to learn to articulate our understanding and explain our knowledge.
Community and Cultural Diversity- We believe our geography lessons are the perfect place to build children’s understanding of the culture rich and diverse world we live in. In every unit we aim to make links with the local, national and global contexts of geography to help us in comparing and contrasting the human and physical differences in places.
Global Citizenship- Sustainability runs throughout out geography curriculum. As geographers, our children learn the importance of our planet and the ideas of global citizenship are threaded through out curriculum, from understanding climate and environmental changes to the impact that tourism and trade have on an area. By providing opportunities for our learning to be based in real-life contexts we engage the children’s curiosity and make them want to use atlases to explore the world.
Our Aim
At Northbrook, we believe that geography is central to helping children understand about the world around them, as well as helping them to understand the community that they belong to. We strive to deliver a high-quality geography education which inspires children's curiosity and fascination about the world and leaves them with an understanding of its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
At Northbrook, we aim to equip pupils with knowledge about the world on a local, national and global level. Throughout their time, children are exposed to a range of experiences in geography that focus on diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. We believe that this growing knowledge about the world will help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments as well as the diverse cultures the world holds.
The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:
- develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
- understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
- collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
- interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
- communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.
pictures
We are dedicated to helping help them think critically and appreciate the subject at its fullest, we also aim to provide a wide range of geographical fieldwork opportunities that really allow children to delve into the “science” of geography. Through a sequence of well-planned geography lessons, we want to prepare our children to enter later life with an understanding of their place in their locally, nationally and globally and be able to articulate their understanding using a carefully structured set of geographical skills.
National curriculum - Geography
Our Learning
At Northbrook, our Geography curriculum has been developed with a focus on knowledge. The critical knowledge is carefully sequence to create a coherent flow and to ensure that children know and remember more.
This progression of knowledge ensures ideas build on secure foundations, and deepens as children progress towards subject aspirational goals. Careful sequencing ensures that elements are regularly returned to, supporting pupils to accumulate knowledge over time, feeding previous topics into current topics supported by Practice and Retrieval strategies. In designing the curriculum, we have considered a broad range of knowledge forms with a focus on being able to articulate substantive and disciplinary knowledge:
In geography, substantive knowledge sets out the content that is to be learned.
This is presented though 4 interrelated forms:
- location and place knowledge
- human and physical processes (the geography community also includes ‘environmental’ as part of this)
- geographical skills.
- climate and global sustainability
Disciplinary knowledge considers how geographical knowledge originates and is revised. It is through disciplinary knowledge that pupils learn the practices of geographers.
Our Geography curriculum reflects careful thinking as to what is to be taught, the rationale for it, the sequencing of learning and the relationships between the forms of knowledge. As a result, pupils know more, remember more and can do more.
To further support the teaching and learning in Geography:
-
A knowledge organiser is used at the start of a new module and contains a key to the knowledge we want our children to remember.
-
We use create a strong program of geographical fieldwork through our lessons to secure the disciplinary concepts needed in geography.
-
We use reference lessons to provide a shared understanding of the foundational knowledge. These lessons support children in accessing the rest of the learning sequence.
-
Thinking tasks offer challenge and an opportunity to apply learning.
-
All of our geography units are cumulatively built and connected through the substantive concepts.
Early years foundation stage
We believe that all learning begins in EYFS. Our curriculum is closely linked with the Early Years Framework to ensure children in EYFS are achieving those early skills within the subject, which will then enable them to continue to progress in geography as they move through school.
Our EYFS curriculum is carefully mapped to provide the foundation skills of “understanding the world” that children need to help them succeed going through into Year 1 and beyond. Learning is linked to core texts and cultural celebrations, with planned learning opportunities carefully mapped to create long lasting, meaningful learning experiences.
Additionally, planning and teaching in geography is fully inclusive ensuring that all children can access the curriculum at their level. Skills and related vocabulary are progressively built upon as children journey through our school. Cross-curricular links are emphasised, enabling the children to apply their skills and knowledge in other areas of the curriculum.
Impact
Children are assessed against our curriculum endpoints based on the knowledge organisers for each unit. Teachers use a range of ongoing assessments to judge children’s knowledge and understanding of geography and ability to apply their geographical skills to a range of situations. Through a variety of different methods: small assessment tasks, retrieval practice, low-stake quizzes, classroom responses a teacher judgement is created based around the year group end points for geography.
Knowledge organisers:
Autumn:
Spring:
Summer:
Subject monitoring
Leaders monitor teaching and learning through pupil voice, staff questionnaires as well as book looks and learning walks and using the online app See Saw to record evidence of learning. The development of the children in school is also monitored through daily informal conversations.
As a result of our whole curriculum, we expect to see all children achieve well by developing knowledge and skills across the curriculum. But we understand that art brings more than this, and aim to ensure that all children will:
-
develop lifelong learning behaviours that help them continue to create and explore in geography
-
appreciate the possibility of geographical sciences as a career and give them the opportunity to have success in modern Britain.
-
be responsible global citizens and courageous advocates of our community through the HEART Values we have instilled in them during their time in school.
-
leave our school, fully equipped for the next stage in their learning.
