Geography
Geography provokes questions about the natural and human world and seeks to provide children with the tools to answer them for themselves, by direct and careful observation and thought.
From the earliest school experience, making sense of their place in the
work in Understanding the World, through to Key Stage 2 and beyond, we want to foster our children’s sense of wonder at the beauty, complexity and diversity of the world around them.
Aims
- Have the right to enjoy and reach their full potential in Geography regardless of physical ability, race,
gender, stage of achievement or economic circumstance. - Develop an informed concern about the quality of our environment and the future of the human habitat.
- Develop an awareness of their locality and the wider world, using a range of geographical enquiry skills including fieldwork, geographical vocabulary, making and using maps and interpreting photographs and aerial photographs.
- Balance the finding of information with investigation and exploration.
- Understand different societies and cultures and realise how nations rely on each other
- Be inspired to think about their own place in the world, their values and their rights and responsibilities to other people.
- Develop ideas of citizenship and challenge stereotypes.
- Think more deeply, moving from finding a simple answer to a question to comparing and contrasting and then evaluating information and synthesizing their own knowledge.
- Demonstrate a strong knowledge of the world around them.
Skills
At Holy Ghost we focus on the Geographical skills that children acquire as they progress through their time in primary school. We have 5 main skills that are covered throughout all year groups and we make this explicit each lesson so the children are aware of which skills they are developing throughout their topic.
Our skills are:
- Asking Geographic Questions
- Acquiring Geographic Information
- Organising Geographic Information
- Analysing Geographical Information
- Answering Geographic Questions
Each lesson the children will think about the learning that is taking place and decide which skill they are concentrating on, this is then displayed on the Geography working wall for the children to refer back to and think about. By Year 6 the children will be confident with these skills and the steps it takes to be a Geographer.
Fieldwork and trips
Fieldwork and trips are a major part of Geography learning at Holy Ghost.
We try to immerse the children into their learning as must as possible through observing in real life and collecting data to then be able to describe their findings and analysing them. This all links in with the Geographical skills above and helps to initiate the children’s love for learning and asking questions.
Before the children go on any trips or complete fieldwork there is an emphasis in the classroom on mapping work. We use a variety of digital mapping as well as using atlases and globes. This gives the children a sense of place and scale before comparing this to real life when they are out and about.
Our curriculum
Attached is the overview of the topics each year group will be learning about. We use the basis of enquiry questions for each topic title so the children are able to work through the 5 skills above in order to ask, acquire, organise and analyse Geographical information before answering their enquiry question.
