Geography Curriculum Intent

Our Geography curriculum aims to develop children’s curiosity about places from the local area to the wider world. Lessons equip pupils with an enjoyment of knowledge and deep understanding of human and physical features, processes and interconnections.  The curriculum provides opportunities for children to develop the key geographical skills of enquiring, collecting/identifying, analysing/explaining, communicating, describing, interpreting and evaluating through a series of enquiries built around a key question or statement, which aim to enable them to ‘think like a geographer’.  The Geographical Society’s core concepts of place, space, earth systems and environment underpin the design of the curriculum, as well as the National Curriculum areas of locational knowledge, place knowledge, human & physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork.  

In KS1 children focus on learning and rehearsing key skills in a local context before learning about the wider world through continents and oceans and a study of a region of a non-European country.  This builds on the foundations created in EYFS where Geography features as part of ‘Understanding the World’, specifically the ‘people, culture and communities’ and ‘natural world’ units.  Within this, children understand and make links with the world around them; understand the physical geography of their worlds (e.g. trees, dirt, rocks); and recognise the ecological world – the animals, different people and cultures.  This is very much child-led with the emphasis on discovery time and integration with the other strands of the EYFS.  

KS2 features a comparison of the local area with a region of France, a North American study focusing on climate change/Alaska, sustainability and looking at what geography looks like for a child in different mountainous areas around the world.  This is to promote thought-provoking, rich geographical thinking about what is the same and what is different between two places in different parts of the world.  Various human and physical knowledge is developed through the study of volcanoes and earthquakes, mountains, rivers and different biomes among others. 

The curriculum is carefully planned to ensure a progression of knowledge of skills as the children move through the school - this is achieved by revisiting and building on key knowledge/skills and also via regular retrieval practice built into each topic.