Horsforth Featherbank Primary School

Intent

At  Horsforth Featherbank Primary School, we want our geography lessons to  inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives. We want to promote the children’s interest and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. The curriculum is designed to develop knowledge and skills that are progressive, as well as transferable, throughout their time at Featherbank and also to their further education and beyond.

Implementation
Teachers across the school use the long term plans for geography to develop children's geographical skills & knowlegde. They use a variety of teaching and learning styles in their geography lessons to guide learners to see trends and processes in a broader, holistic perspective, resulting in knowledge that the children know and remember well. This is done through exploring the following substantive concepts & geographical skills over their entire primary geography journey:-

Key Concepts 

• Location is a specific place & means defining where a certain place is, with reference to some other place. This reference is usually done using a coordinate system; absolute location is defined using its exact address (latitude or longitude). Relative location describes where a place is in relation to other locations.
• Place is the human & physical characteristics of the environment and addresses this question: What’s it like there?
• Region is areas that share common characteristics. Geographers study them because they can compare them to other regions, and see their differences. A region can be based on language, government, religion, type of flora and fauna or climate.
• Interaction (human-environment) how humans adapt to & change the environment of a place. We do all sorts of things that change the environment, like building highways and bridges, farming land, and causing pollution.
• Movement is the travel of people, goods, and ideas from one location to another. Movement deals with studies of population immigration, emigration, and distribution in the countries of the world. It is this physical movement of people that has allowed the human race to inhabit all the continents of the world, explore the depths of the oceans and land on the moon.

Geographical skills

• Geographical inquiry: is a process by which students learn about and deepen their understanding of geography; they use initial research to identify, develop and modify geographically significant questions to frame an inquiry. For successful inquiries students must get used to working in an open-ended, investigative way in geography. They must ask questions, think for themselves and critically evaluate what they find out. For this to happen the teacher must create a 'culture' of enquiry in the classroom.
• Direction & location: describing the path that is needed to reach a specific place (location).
• Map skills: map skills help us to read maps and ascertain information from their symbols and scales. They’re essential for directions, distance, representation, perspective & recognising the different features of a landscape.
• Fieldwork: research, exploration, or observation conducted in the field rather than the laboratory or classroom.

EARLY YEARS FOUNDATION STAGE

Geography starts in the EYFS with children learning about themselves. They begin to get a sense of where they live in relation to the wider world around them. They will look at and compare different environments & distant places through stories, nursery rhymes and topic.

 KEY STAGE ONE

 At the beginning of Year 1 the children develop their understanding of basic vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, as they enhance their locational awareness of the area that they live in. They then start to look at the United Kingdom, identifying its four nations and studying seasonal & daily weather patterns, gathering data using weather instruments and recording them on a weather chart. By focusing on the seaside, the children end Year 1 with a developing understanding of the oceans of the world & the seas around Britain, learning some of the key human & physical features associated with a seaside resort / coastal town. In Year 2 the children focus on the importance of capital cities and use London as a focus study to develop their understanding of the basic geographical vocabulary associated with cities. They then use maps & atlases to identify the equator and the polar regions, and explore how people have adapted to living in extreme climates. By focusing on a contrasting place in the world, the children finish Year 2 by understanding the geographical similarities & differences between Leeds, England and Kingston, Jamaica.

 KEY STAGE TWO

In Year 3 the children deepen their geographical knowledge of the UK, and further develop their knowledge of important places in the world and their defining geographical features, and processes. Children use their geographical skills to understand the Earth's physical properties and why humans choose to settle where they do, even if natural processes pose a catastrophic threat to mankind (volcanic eruptions & earthquakes). In Year 4 the children begin by enhancing their locational & place knowledge by studying an area of North America; they then go on to look at how rivers are formed and gain a sound understanding of the water cycle. Map skills continue to be developed as they study the Roman Empire, using 4 figure grid references for the first time. The children end Year 4 by completing a comparison study between a beach resort in Yorkshire and a typical Mediterranean resort in Greece. In Year 5 the children continue to use maps to further their geographical skills, using 6 figure grid references to pin point more exact locations. They then use their improving geographical skills to explore economic activity by learning about trade routes and why countries import & export goods. They learn about the fair trade process and why this important for ensuring that the people & planet are not exploited to create the products that we enjoy. They finish the year by identifying a variety of biomes that cover the surface of the earth, building on early geography work in Year 2 to identify the features of those that are more extreme, and exploring in depth how people, plants & animals have adapted to live there. In Year 6 the children use the scope of World War 2 to gain a deeper understanding of world geography and then finish their geographical journey by completing an in depth study of Brazil & the Amazon, comparing the human & physical features with that of the UK.

Impact
By the time the children at Featherbank leave our school they should have:

•  developed 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.
• understood 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
• competence 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
• interpreted a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems
•  communicated geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

Assessment in geography is an ongoing process. Teachers will make informal judgements about pupils progress & attainment as they observe them throughout lessons & mark their work. Outcomes in  writing books evidence a broad and balanced geography curriculum and demonstrate the children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge and skills. Regular school trips provide further relevant and contextual learning. Pop quizzes at the end of each unit will help teachers to identify what children know and remember well..