Intent
At Palfrey Infant school, our geography curriculum inspires children start to becoming curious and explorative thinkers, as their knowledge of the world and its diversity begins to develop. In other words, they begin to start thinking like a geographer.
We begin to build an awareness in our children of how geography shapes our lives in many different aspects. We encourage our children to become resourceful, active citizens who will have the skills to contribute to help improving the world around them.
Learning in geography at Palfrey Infant school encourages a strong focus on developing both geographical skills and knowledge. It encourages the children’s ability to begin to ask questions and analyse evidence. Our geography curriculum also provides opportunities for the development of fieldwork skills across each year group. It deepens the pupils’ knowledge of their own locality and how it differs from other areas of the world. During their time studying geography at our school, our children to gain a growing understanding of geographical terms and vocabulary.
The aims of our geography curriculum are aligned with those set out in the National Curriculum. They enable children to meet the attainment targets by the end of Key stage 1.
Implementation
The National curriculum organises the Geography attainment targets under four subheadings or strands:
Our curriculum has a clear progression of skills and knowledge within these four strands across KS1. The skills we teach in each year group develop to ensure attainment targets can be securely met by the end of the Key stage.
Furthermore, we provide a spiral curriculum with essential knowledge and skills that are revisited with increasing complexity, that allow the children to revise and build on their previous learning. Cross -curricular links are made that allow our children to apply their geography skills to other areas of the learning.
The units we teach are enquiry based and start with a question. Through studying each unit, children gain an understanding of geographical knowledge and skills by applying them to answer questions. In attempting to answer these questions, children learn how to collect, interpret and present simple data. This then helps them to make informed decisions by applying their geographical knowledge.
Each unit contains elements of geographical skills and field work to ensure that field work skills are practiced as often as possible. Field work opportunities are developed within the school environment and revisiting them enables pupils to consolidate their skills. Field work within the school environment makes it regular and accessible while giving children a deeper understanding of their locality. This also helps them when comparing it to other places.
Lessons are well sequenced. We build children’s knowledge in small manageable steps that build upon prior knowledge. Each lesson begins with a quick quiz/ recap of the learning to date. Lessons incorporate various teaching styles from independent tasks, paired work, group work and practical hands on tasks. This variety means that lessons are engaging and apply a variety of learning styles.
Impact
Teachers are able to assess the impact of learning in geography through assessing children against the learning objectives and National Curriculum expectations for geography in KS1. Each of our enquiry-based units allow this.
The expected impact of our curriculum is that by the end of KS1 children will:
We aim to inspire our children with an interest and curiosity about the world, it’s diversity and it’s people that will remain with them. We wish for them to become inspired geographers with respect and appreciation for the world around them along side an understanding between the human and physical elements.
By the end of Key stage 1, pupils should leave Palfrey Infant School equipped with a range of skills and knowledge to enable them to study geography with confidence at Key stage 2.