Geography
Intent
At Roundhay St John’s, we want our children to be excited about the world. At local, national and international level, we intend to provide a purposeful platform to inspire fascination and curiosity about our planet and all its diverse people and places. Focusing on both human and physical geography, the children will leave primary school with a deep knowledge and understand of the processes that have created the environments we find ourselves in as well as the importance of sustaining this for future generations. They will be able to locate significant cities, countries, continents and oceans across the globe and be able to comment on significant characteristics of these. We are fortunate to live in a fascinating community and we intend to use this to explore and expand on the children’s geographical skills during field work and map related activities.
Implementation
Geography teaching starts within our early years setting which supports children’s understanding through the planning and teaching of ‘Understanding the World’. Children learn about features of their own environment such as school, home, community and their city through first-hand experiences and learn how environments may differ through the sharing of books, stories, poems, small world play, role play and visits. This strong foundation stands the children in good stead for Key Stage 1 and beyond.
Once the children reach Year 1, we teach the National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression which ensures that these skills are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children. Key locational knowledge and mapping skills are constantly revisited to ensure children retain these key aspects of the subject. Existing knowledge is checked at the start of each new topic which ensures that teaching is informed by the children's starting points.
It is important that children develop the skills of a geographer by fully immersing them in all areas of the subject. The local area is fully utilised to achieve desired outcomes, with opportunities for learning outside the classroom. School trips and fieldwork are provided to give first-hand experiences to enhance children's understanding of the world beyond their locality and effective use of educational visits and visitors are planned, to enrich and enhance the pupil’s learning experiences within the Geography curriculum.
We understand that Geography has natural links with other curriculum subjects so regular opportunities are provided for cross curricular work in Maths, Writing and Computing among others.
The Subject Leader will regularly monitor, evaluate and review the teaching and learning through learning walks, book scrutinies and discussions with both teachers and pupils.
Impact
As children progress throughout the school, they will develop a deep knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their local area and its place within the wider geographical context. They will have an excellent, world-wide knowledge of where places are as well as an excellent understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected and how much human and physical environments are interrelated. They will have an extensive base of geographical vocabulary and be fluent in geographical enquiry with the ability to apply questioning skills and use effective analytical and presentational techniques. Ultimately, our Geography curriculum will lead pupils to be enthusiastic ‘Geographers’ with a solid foundation that will enable them to flourish in this subject at secondary school and beyond.
