At Bloxham C of E Primary School geography education is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to provide a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensure the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills. Naturally we want the children to develop a deep love for geography. Furthermore, we aim to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Our teaching will equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with an understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Intent

At Bloxham C of E Primary School geography education is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to provide a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensure the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills. Naturally we want the children to develop a deep love for geography. Furthermore, we aim to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Our teaching will equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with an understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

The aims of teaching geography in our school are:

• To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the world

• To enable children to know about  the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities,  seas and oceans.

• To develop in children the skills of interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

• To help children understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes it location and can change over time.

 

Implementation

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught in topics, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Bloxham C of E 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. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

When teaching geography the teachers ensure the children’s learning is engaging, broad and balanced. We provide a variety of opportunities for geography learning inside and outside the classroom. Educational visits are another opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional geography learning outside the classroom. The children have had many opportunities to experience geography on educational visits. The children have explored the local area including orienteering within the school grounds and conducting river studies in our forest classroom. We have had trips to local woods and  have used map reading skills during trips out.

 

Impact

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.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• 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 looked at 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.