Geography

  CATHCART STREET PRIMARY SCHOOL

GEOGRAPHY VISION

At Cathcart Street Primary School, our Geography curriculum is designed to provoke our pupils to investigate, discover and develop a sense of awe about the natural and human world, including their local area and the county in which they live.

Intent

At Cathcart Street, our intent is to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world, its people and its places, that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Geography plays an important part in this as it can inspire children to think about their own place in the world, their values, and their rights and responsibilities to other people and the environment. We want to provoke questions and geographical enquiry, about the natural and human worlds, developing children’s cultural awareness and knowledge about their local area, diverse places, people, resources, and environments.

Our plans are designed by the school, to develop children’s understanding of their local area geography as well as national and international geography. It also supports the aims of the National Curriculum so that all pupils:

• Understand the physical and human characteristics of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine.
• Understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features change over time
• Have the skills needed to:

(National Curriculum, 2014)

Implementation

Geography takes place every other half term, as shown on the long-term plan. All learning will start by revisiting key knowledge. This will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections.

Staff will model, explicitly, the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. Learning will be supported through the use of knowledge organisers that provide children with scaffolding that supports them to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long-term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching, to support home learning and also as a part of lesson review.

Consistent working walls in every classroom provide constant scaffolding for children. Tier three subject specific vocabulary is displayed on the working wall along with key facts and a record of the learning that has taken place, for children to refer to. Weekly key knowledge quizzes are used to review learning and check that children know more and remember more.

Learning is reviewed also on a termly basis, after a period of forgetting, so that teachers can check whether information has been retained, this is comes in the form of a Key Knowledge End of Unit Quiz. Geography assessment is ongoing through assessment the work produced, considering whether the children have the knowledge embedded and can use the geographical facts and skills, as and when needed to suit their purpose. Summative assessment is completed at the end of each topic, where geography objectives and skills have been covered.  A skills tracker is used to inform teachers and the Geography Leader of school improvements or skills that need to be further enhanced. Our geographers are be given a variety of experiences both in and out of the classroom where appropriate to create memorable learning opportunities and to further support and develop their geographical understanding and skills.

In Early Years Foundation Stage, we relate the geographical aspects of children’s work to the Birth to 5 Matters programme and the Early Learning Goals. 

 Impact

By implementing the intent, children at Cathcart Street should:

• 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.