Overall Curriculum Intent

For every child to enjoy an innovative, creative and inclusive curriculum that provides them with the skills and experiences to flourish. To provide the foundations for lifelong learning, aspirational futures and commitment to make a positive impact on the world. 

Value

Respect, Trust, Courage, Kindness, Thankfulness, Humility

Welcome

Here you will find information about our wonderful Geography curriculum.

Our Geography Curriculum

At Torrisholme Community Primary School, we are GEOGRAPHERS! We want our children to love geography. Our aim is to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for geography, providing a broad, balanced curriculum that is ambitious for all children; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge, vocabulary and skills required to appreciate diverse local, national and global communities and environments through the study of human and physical geography. We have designed our geography curriculum with the intent that it will inspire our children with a curiosity, fascination and appreciation of the world around them. We want to ensure that through geography, pupils are able to explore the relationship between the Earth and its people through the study of place, space and environment.

Through the teaching of Geography, we intend to inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the world and become passionate and knowledgeable about our local community and beyond, by learning through experiences in practical and fieldwork activities. We intend for every child to become an inquisitive and enthusiastic geographer who uses their knowledge to understand their world and how it is represented on maps. We place an emphasis on developing a secure knowledge of our locality.

At Torrisholme School, we strive to:

⦁ Create confident geographers and prepare them for the journey beyond.

⦁ Create deep-seated learning and skills, as a permanent foundation for the next steps in progression.

⦁ Promote higher order analytical and creative thinking, in considering real world features, problems and solutions.

⦁ Challenge children to research information and think for themselves, give reasoned answers, work independently, be socially aware of local and global geographical issues, and develop good resilience and attitudes to learning.

⦁ Create fun, enjoyable, engaging, memorable learning experiences.

⦁ Give children the opportunity to consider and apply cross curricular learning.

⦁ Enable children to know about the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans.

⦁ Develop in children the skills of interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes and aerial photographs.

⦁ Help children understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes its location and can change over time. 

⦁ Provide children with a better understanding of climate issues. Children will learn about issues and factors affecting climate change and will become aware of how they can play a part in making a difference for the future.

⦁ Encourage children to recognise their role as stewards of our world and understand the need to ensure its use is sustainable.

⦁ To foster an appreciation of diverse local, national and global communities and environments and understand that they are created by natural forces or impacted by people.

Our aims for geography are all underpinned by our school vision: We are learning together, to care for ourselves, each other and the world.

Implementation

Our geography curriculum is designed so that children understand how big our wonderful Earth is, that we are part of a world with land and water. They explore continents in KS1 and then learn where we are within this. The children learn very quickly the scale of the world and their local area as they study this in more detail in KS1, using maps to explore the local area and familiarising themselves with symbols. In KS2, we look at understanding that we are part of the world, belong to the continent of Europe, we are part of the United Kingdom, this is broken down into regions, counties, cities and towns. We have developed a progression of skills with each year group, which enables pupils to build on and develop their knowledge and skills each year. Cross curricular links are planned for, where possible. Children are taught geography units for 6 x  1 hour sessions in each term.

In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we will:

• Implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout school.
• Ensure planning is informed by and aligned with the National Curriculum. Teachers’ lesson design is influenced by resources such as the Collin’s scheme. They are trusted to enhance their lessons and make the teaching and learning of geography an enjoyable, creative, stimulating and memorable experience for pupils.
• Teachers cater for the varying needs of all learners, ensuring an appropriate level of challenge is available for all children, including those with SEND.
• At the start of each unit, children will review previous learning and will have the opportunity to share what they already know about a current topic.
• In order to support children in their ability to know more and remember more, there are regular opportunities to review the learning that has taken place in previous units as well as previous lessons.
• Children are to be given a knowledge organiser at the start of each unit which details some key information, key questions and vocabulary. This is not used as part of an assessment, but to support children with their acquisition of knowledge and are used as a reference document.
• We feel it is important to enable all children to gain ‘real life’ experiences and they should be given opportunities to take part in progressive fieldwork activities in their local area to look at change, comparing similarities and differences in environments and communities and completing an in-depth study of the locality.
• Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, and resources, natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. In addition, they will develop their knowledge and understanding of the wider world and have a better understanding of how people live in different areas of the world. 

Impact

The impact of our geography curriculum is monitored closely through the effective use of learning walks, book looks and pupil conferences, to ensure that the children's learning reflects a sound understanding of the key identified knowledge.  Geography lessons will engage our children and facilitate and inspire them to become inquisitive, resilient, independent, challenging thinkers and active global citizens with the confidence to use, and build on, their cultural capital, learning and experiences - both inside and outside of the classroom. The impact of this geography curriculum design will lead to outstanding progress over time across key stages relative to a child’s individual starting point and their progression of skills. Upon leaving primary school to embark on their journey to Key Stage 3 learning, children will be equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to confidently continue their geography learning journey.