Geography

Intent

At Wivelsfield, through carefully planned learning opportunities and fieldwork, we inspire curiosity about the physical and human processes. From their locality to the wider world, children will gain an in-depth understanding of diverse places, people and resources.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, and children will learn the substantive knowledge from the national curriculum and beyond. The disciplinary knowledge with thread through all learning, under these core areas: Place, Space, Environment, Scale, Change, Interconnections and Sustainability. Through an enquiry-based curriculum, we develop a deeper understanding of the geography skills- honing our learning into one aspect of a wider ‘topic’ to ensure depth of learning.

In order to teach the fieldwork skills and engage the children, the teaching of geography, wherever possible will be practical and outdoor based- enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

Reading will thread into the teaching of Geography: From learning new vocabulary at the beginning of each topic, to reading keys on maps, the children will be exposed to different reading opportunities wherever possible.

The geography curriculum at Wivelsfield Primary School is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills that are taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of skills document. Teachers can use this document to plan their geography lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

Geography provides excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through investigations, analysing sources and writing extending pieces. Children showing extensive aptitude in geography will be given opportunities to showcase their learning by completing tasks and challenges that don’t restrict their output.

Educational visits are another opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional geography learning outside the classroom. At Wivelsfield Primary School, the children have had many opportunities to experience geography on educational visits. The children have explored the local area including orienteering within the school grounds, conducting local area surveys in the village and visiting the local woodland and pond- all of which are in close proximity to the school. In addition to this, we have lots of fantastic geographical features on our doorstep, with visits to Cuckmere Haven and the South Downs providing excellent opportunities for children to practise their fieldwork skills beyond the school grounds.

Impact

Through well-planned and progressive teaching of geographical skills, children will leave Wivelsfield Primary School with a clear understanding of the human and physical features of their locality and the world. They will be explorative, asking geographical questions that are of interest to them. They will have advanced fieldwork skills that they can apply to real-world scenarios. Children leaving Wivelsfield Primary School will be Geographers.

Geography whole school subject overview

Geography Whole School Substantive and Disciplinary Knowledge.pdf