Rationale:
Our geography curriculum incorporates fundamental geographical knowledge and skills, allowing pupils to build on a firm foundation in future years. It has been organised using a spiral approach revisiting places and topics in ways that build depth of knowledge and understanding.
Knowledge organisers are shared at the start of every unit. Pupils are taught strategies to help them learn the knowledge and vocabulary that they contain. We also share ideas with parents on how to support their children to learn the content at home. Vocabulary is taught explicitly with opportunities provided for deliberate practice. Pre teaching is used to support any identified pupils to be able to access the age-related curriculum.
Units move outwards from the familiar to the less familiar. For example, in year 3 pupils learn about villages, towns and cities which are familiar concepts to them. In year 5 pupils learn about biomes and in year 6 globalisation is delivered, concepts that are less familiar.
An introduction to settlements, tectonic processes and hydrological and climatic processes introduce Year 3 pupils to concepts, vocabulary and knowledge that is capitalised on in subsequent years, laying important foundations of much of their future geographical learning.
When pupils study Migration in Year 4, they will utilise their knowledge of settlement types in order to deepen their understanding of migration patterns. This knowledge and understanding support their comprehension of why communities develop around areas of rich natural resources, and how slums develop.
The Natural Resources unit then feeds into the Year 5 unit on Energy and Sustainability, by supporting pupils’ understanding of where energy comes from and how greater sustainability can be achieved.
The Year 6 units on Population and Globalisation draw on themes that have been explored throughout KS2, so pupils are really able to approach these complex topics with a great depth and breadth of knowledge.
The Rivers unit in Year 4 follows on from the Water, Weather and Climate unit and pupils then continue to build on this knowledge of physical processes through the Biomes unit.
The Local Fieldwork unit is in Year 6, so that pupils are exposed to geographical research in KS2. This is a crucial part of a child’s geographical education and we have intentionally incorporated this unit at the end of KS2 to capitalise on their greater maturity and geographical knowledge.
Each lesson begins with retrieval practise to assess how much pupils have remembered. Each unit ends with an essay allowing pupils the opportunity to write about the knowledge and vocabulary that they have learnt.
Geography Curriculum Documents:
To view all Knowledge Organisers for all year groups click on the folder link below:
