Geography | Christopher Pickering Primary School

GEOGRAPHY AT CHRISTOPHER PICKERING

‘The study of Geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world’ President Barack Obama

‘Geography explains the past, illuminates the present and prepares us for the future. What could be more important than that?’ Michael Palin

Intent

Our Geography curriculum is designed to develop children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Children investigate a range of places in the UK, in Europe and the wider world, including diverse places, people and resources to help develop their knowledge and understanding of the Earth’s physical and human processes. We ensure that as pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world will help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

We are committed to providing children with opportunities to investigate and make enquiries about their local area of Hull so that they can develop of real sense of who they are, their heritage and what makes our local area unique and special. We are also developing the children’s ability to apply geographical skills to enable them to confidently communicate their findings and geographical understanding to a range of audiences.

Through high quality teaching, we develop the following essential characteristics of geographers;

An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are like, both in the UK and the wider world.
An comprehensive understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and
interconnected.
An extensive base of geographical knowledge and vocabulary.
Fluency in complex, geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills, as well as effective presentation techniques.
The ability to reach clear conclusions and explain their findings.
Excellent fieldwork skills, geographical aptitudes and techniques.
The ability to express well-balanced opinions, rooted in knowledge and
understanding about current issues in society and the environment.
A genuine interest in the subject and a real sense of curiosity about the world and the people who live here.

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Christopher Pickering Primary School, we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

The Geography curriculum at Christopher Pickering Primary School is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. The subject leader and curriculum lead have planned the curriculum across the school to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum is achieved and children are able to identify key concepts and apply skills and knowledge to new concepts in line with our topic based approach.

Impact

Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments.