Geography

"The study of geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It's about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents." - Barack Obama.

"Geography is the tapestry that weaves the world together." Gil Grosvenor.

Intent

Our aim for the Geography curriculum at Crowthorne CofE is to inspire our children's curiosity about the world around them and make sense of its people, places and environments through explanatory relationships. It has been designed to guide and aid our children as they develop key geographical skills and broaden their horizons by developing their knowledge and understanding through the four areas of geography; locational knowledge, place knowledge, skills and fieldwork practicals, and the study of human and physical geographical features. We aim to achieve this by providing a broad, balanced and progressive curriculum through the layering of knowledge, skills and understanding year on year, and promote within our children a curiosity not only into the workings of the intimate and wider world around them, but to also consider their place within it.

Our key aims are:

• to support children as they develop a solid understanding of scale, positioning, orientation and distance
• to aid children in the development of their place, and sense of self, in both their local communities and the wider world
• to provide opportunities for children to continually build on the knowledge and skills they obtain/develop each year and support them to retain increasing quantities, while developing the quality, of the geographical information they explore over time
• to promote the children's independent recognition of trends by frequently providing opportunities for them to gather, analyse, present and interpret data across the geographical contexts
• to engage children regularly in fieldwork and experientials to bind their locational and contextual knowledge, and promote an inquisitiveness into the similarities and differences between their proximal and the wider world(s)

Implementation

Our Geography curriculum is delivered with the intent of providing the knowledge necessary to build an understanding of the world, its processes and their place within it. To initiate this, in Early Years and KS1, this starts with the introduction to and exploration of familiar locations; such as their home, classroom and our school. This progresses gradually outwards; to consider Crowthorne village and the surrounding areas and then, as children progress through KS2, they are provided opportunities to develop a more conceptual knowledge at regional, national and global levels; considering, as they do, how these locations differ and present similarities in not only their physical, climatic and wider-world locality features, but in their human, cultural and historical features too. Our well-rounded Geography curriculum promotes the children making and exploring connections between what they know and have experienced first-hand, to what is out there on the horizon, and our progressive approach to the study of this subject has been specifically designed to do this. For, without an understanding of location early on in their education, children lack one of the fundamental geographical skills that enables them to make sense of the many natural and human happenings of our planet. Location influences a wealth of Earth's systems and our curriculum has been designed to gradually support the development and deepening of this knowledge.

Enquiry based learning has also been carefully planned into our progressive structure which affords the children continual opportunities to revisit, practice, develop and finetune their skills regularly in a range of contexts, and across different subject area focuses. Additionally, independent research, the use of computing equipment, high quality resources and cross-curricular links are utilised to further engage and enthuse our pupils while scaffolding their development of a breadth of skills. By the time they leave primary education, we strive to have provided our children with a wealth of experiences specifically chosen and designed to instil in them an interest in the wider world, and provide the knowledge and guidance necessary to consider their place within it.

Impact

Geography is monitored and assessed by teachers who monitor the children's comprehension, retention and depth of knowledge while observing them in-lesson, in addition to end-of-unit assessment pieces. Teacher judgements are made based on the children's ability to implement the subject knowledge they have retained and use this, in addition to the elements and skills of geographical study taught throughout their time with us, to share, develop and explore their own understanding. The subject is also monitored and guided greatly through lesson drop-ins and book looks conducted by the subject lead, in addition to the gathering and evaluation of pupil voice to guide the subject's further development.

At Crowthorne CofE, we want the impact of our Geography curriculum to be that:

• children recognise the importance of Geography as a subject in its own right, and be able to identify some of the key features which distinguish it from others; using appropriate subject-specific vocabulary as they do so
• children feel inspired to question, explore and analyse features/processes evident in their local and wider world, and use these questions to seek an understanding of their meaning
• children find the subject content rich, challenging and thought-provoking
• children understand the contextual knowledge of the subject; both globally and locationally - including land-use patterns, and understand the processes that give rise to change over time - both human and physical
• children feel confident to collect, analyse and interpret data gathered from a range of sources, and their own field work; using sources such as maps, diagrams and Geographical Information Systems, and present their findings in a variety of ways