Geography
INTENT
Geography stimulates curiosity and imagination as it provides a means of exploring, appreciating and understanding the world in which we live, how it has evolved and how people impact and change places. Through our curriculum we aim to build upon the child’s ‘personal geography’ by developing geographical skills, understanding and knowledge through studying places, themes and we encourage children to learn about the world around them through fieldwork. It is an integral part of the Geography curriculum. At Lyon Park we want children to be ‘global citizens’ and be aware of how they impact the world through the choices they make as they become adults.
Our geography curriculum encourages our pupils:
- To understand and respect the natural world and its resources
- To instil a sense of curiosity and develop inquisitive minds
- To appreciate human achievements and aspirations, in turn, developing their own
- To develop place and locational knowledge as well a deep understanding of physical and human features
- To identify changes over time and compare lives through artefacts
- To understand how our values and attitudes affect the world
- To develop the necessary skills to interpret primary and secondary source materials and distinguish between facts and interpretations
IMPLEMENTATION
Our Geography curriculum explores the relationship between the world and the people in it. We want our children to see the links between nature and people (physical geography) and people and people (human geography) so that as they get older they assume their responsibility to look after the world as well as enjoy the wondrous landscapes, mountains and rivers as well as cultures in the many countries of the world’s continents. The Learning Challenge Curriculum is used to aid the philosophy behind our geography curriculum as it is an enquiry based approach. We have improved the content by adding a ‘global citizenship aspect so that children can look at how we can preserve the world in which we live. For example, when Year 1 study the UK and four seas, they will also look at plastic in the seas and what action they can take to protect the environment. To aid and further develop the understanding of how history has shaped the world today and to aid place and locational knowledge, children links are made in Geography to places studied in history.
At the start of each topic, the children have to answer the Big Question to elicit how much information they may already have about the topic but also to highlight any misconceptions that they may have. Children also look at the current topic that they are studying and where it sits in time with previous topics. The teacher then plans the sequences of lessons following the medium term plans and elicits and assesses children's knowledge and understanding throughout the unit of work.
IMPACT
The impact of the history curriculum will be measured in the following ways:
- Standards and quality of children’s learning as evaluated through learning reviews, knowledge assessments, essays responses and outcome in books.
- Pupil voice – children able to confidently talk about their learning and recall recent and previous learning
- Pupil voice – children able to show how historical knowledge is impacting on their choices as citizens
Please see links below for further information.
