Geography

Curriculum Leader: Miss Emily Marrows

Intent: At Theddlethorpe Academy, Geography supports an understanding of places and environments. Through their work in geography, we want children to learn about their local area and compare their life in this area with that in other regions in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world. This starts at an early age in Early Years, through looking at 'people and communities' and 'the world,' aspects of the Understanding the World unit. We want our children to be familiar with the local surroundings through visits and references to the local area. Links to local businesses, for example, help to forge an understanding of the importance tourism for the seaside community of Mablethorpe, whilst visits to local farms help children to understand where their food comes from and the importance of farming within the community. Visits to the local seal sanctuary provide opportunities for our children to learn about local wildlife and conservation.

In addition, geography has connections to many other curriculum areas, such as History and Science, and our aim is to link knowledge and skills together, through thematic topics. For example, Year 5 and 6 study South America, which provides wonderful opportunities to develop knowledge and skills across geography and wider curriculum subjects. We want out children to develop skills such as learning how to draw and interpret maps and developing the skills of research, investigation, analysis and problem-solving. Through their growing knowledge and understanding of human geography, children will gain an appreciation of life in other cultures.

Implementation: At Theddlethorpe Academy, Geography is explicitly taught in years 1 to 6 and this allows children to focus on developing their knowledge and skills, studying each topic in depth.

We use the milestones created by Chris Quigley Education, in conjunction with our planning to ensure the children develop their knowledge and skills as they move from Early Years through to Key Stage 1 and 2. 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. Inter-curricular links are planned for, with other subjects such as Maths, Writing and Computing being incorporated within geography lessons and the curriculum.

Children are 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.

In geography lessons, children are given clear success criteria in order to achieve the Learning Intention with different elements of independence. Effective modelling by teachers ensures that children are able to achieve their learning intention, with misconceptions addressed within it. Through using a range of assessment tools, scaffolding is facilitated by teachers, to ensure that each pupil can access the Geography curriculum.

Teachers are encouraged to consider opportunities available to use the school grounds and the local area for fieldwork to enable children to base learning on first hand experiences to enhance teaching and learning in Geography.