At Ryders Green, we strive to give every child, every opportunity, at their one chance in primary school.
Geography at Ryders Green
At Ryders Green Primary School geography education will be fully inclusive to every child. Geography, by nature, is an investigative subject. Through our teaching, we intend to provoke thought, questions and to encourage children to discover answers to their own questions through exploration and research to enable them to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it.
Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the EYFS Framework and the Primary National Curriculum for Geography and provide opportunities to build incrementally on learning from 2-11 years in the following ways:
· By providing an ambitiously and coherently designed broad, balanced and inclusive curriculum that inspires pupils’ curiosity and fascination about the local and global world and its diversity (culturally, environmentally and ecologically)
· By providing coherently planned in-lesson opportunities that introduce geographical concepts, knowledge and skills, which build on prior knowledge and fosters a love of the subject.
· By ensuring that pupils can articulate their learning about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
· By providing lively and effective learning in Geography that has a wide application to everyday life so that children enjoy learning about the world and to have a better understanding of how people live in different locations.
The topics within each year group:
Year 1.
- Autumn 1 – What it’s like where we live?
- Spring 1 – Where do different animals live?
- Summer 1 – What will we see on our journey around the world?
Year 2.
- Autumn 1 – 7 wonders of the world
- Spring 1 – Where does our food come from?
- Summer 1 – What are seasons?
Year 3.
- Autumn 2 – Where on Earth are we?
- Summer 1 – Is climate cool?
- Summer 2 – Do you like to be beside the seaside?
Year 4.
- Autumn 2 – Natural Disasters
- Spring 1 – Raging Rivers & Monstrous Mountains
- Summer 1 – Can you come on a great American road trip?
Year 5.
- Autumn 2 – Where should we go on holiday?
- Spring 1 – What is it like in the Amazon?
- Spring 2 – How has the Amazon changed over time?
- Summer 2 – How is our country changing?
Year 6.
- Autumn 2 – Investigating trade and economics during WWII?
- Spring 2 – Are we damaging our world?
- Summer 2 – How will our world look in the future?
What are the intentions for geography at Ryders Green Primary School?
At Ryders Green Primary School geography education will be fully inclusive to every child. Geography, by nature, is an investigative subject. Through our teaching, we intend to provoke thought, questions and to encourage children to discover answers to their own questions through exploration and research to enable them to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it.
Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the EYFS Framework and the Primary National Curriculum for Geography and provide opportunities to build incrementally on learning from 2-11 years in the following ways:
• By providing an ambitiously and coherently designed broad, balanced and inclusive curriculum that inspires pupils’ curiosity and fascination about the local and global world and its diversity (culturally, environmentally and ecologically)
• By providing coherently planned in-lesson opportunities that introduce geographical concepts, knowledge and skills, which build on prior knowledge and fosters a love of the subject.
• By ensuring that pupils can articulate their learning about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
• By providing lively and effective learning in Geography that has a wide application to everyday life so that children enjoy learning about the world and to have a better understanding of how people live in different locations.
How do we implement our intentions for geography at Ryders Green Primary School?
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. In Year 1-6, Geography is taughtas part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the EYFS Framework and Primary National Curriculum. At Ryders Green Primary School, we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.
Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document and teaching is designed to help learners to remember in the long term the content they have been taught and to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts.
We use a variety of teaching and learning methods in our lessons – ensuring whole class teaching is combined with practical enquiry based research activities. We provide our children with opportunities to develop their critical thinking as a way of fostering curiosity.
Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers: providing excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through the investigations, analysing sources and writing extending pieces.
At Ryders Green Primary School we provide a variety of opportunities for geography learning inside and outside the classroom. The golden thread of our Outdoor Learning curriculum is to ensure that children have an opportunity to embed and grow their understanding of their locality in the most practical sense. 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.
What is our intended impact of geography at Ryders Green Primary School?
Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.
Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary also form part of the units of work. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments. Our children will be confident geographers and be able to clearly discuss their learning from past and current topics, as well as explain their next steps.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.
Geography: National Curriculum – Geography key stages 1 to 2 – GOV.UK
Our approach to the curriculum meets our duties in the Equality Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014
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Updated 3rd February 2023
