Geography

INTENT

• Our geography curriculum encompasses the 4I’s and is rooted alongside the school values ERIC.
• Our pupils develop an understanding of the world, prepares them for their future and their place in it.
• Our geography curriculum inspires a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people.
• Our pupils explore their own environment and challenges pupils to make connections between their local surroundings and that of contrasting settlements.
• Where our curriculum is interleaving- inspirational texts with geographical and eco themes drive and support the learning.
• Geography is integrated with other national curriculum subjects including English, maths, science and art which enables sticky learning.
• Not only does our curriculum follow the national curriculum objectives, the inspirational topics promote pupil’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of their development.
• Our geography curriculum equips children with an understanding of diverse places, people, resources and environments around them.

IMPLEMENTATION

• Our geography curriculum is a bespoke curriculum which has its own progressive scheme of work created at MJS.
• The geography national curriculum objectives are organised so that they build on pupil’s prior experiences, therefore making learning memorable and transferable.
• Pupils begin their year group with a world and UK map of prior learning which is then built on as they learn their geography topics.
• A geography progression of skills is organised into four main themes: locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and geographic skills and fieldwork and teachers can clearly see pupils start and end points.
• Within each year group there are inspirational questions and at least one or two Geographical/Eco key drivers.
• Our teaching and learning of geography is implemented via DeBono philosophy of learning and Bloom’s taxonomy- this enables all pupils to access the geography objectives thus an inclusive curriculum.
• For those pupils who have additional needs – an interleaving, augmented geography curriculum is provided allowing our pupils to develop geographical skills and access geographical knowledge.

IMPACT

•   Our pupils:

- Develop the ability to be independent thinkers empowering them to be enthusiastic on for example climate change and the challenges it brings.

- Critically assess similarities and differences of their locality, within Europe for example our visit to France impacts greatly on this as well as international locations such as Brazil.

- Recognise and respect global and local geographical issues and their role with these issues.

• Our recent Green flag achievement demonstrates how far the school has made progress with our pupils’ recognition of ecological themes.
• Out of class opportunities ensure geography is ongoing and embedded which provides pupils to take responsibility for looking after their environments.
• Outcomes of the assessment of geography demonstrates the majority of our pupils are working at or above their age group across the school.