Geography at Adlington Primary School

Intent

At Adlington Primary School, we believe geography education should be fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills; and for the children to develop a love for geography.

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. Teaching of Geography at Adlington Primary, should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. (The 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England) 

At Adlington Primary School, our Geography curriculum is designed to help children understand the world, its environments, places near and far and the processes that create or affect them. It encourages a holistic approach of how the world works and develops the skills of place and locational knowledge, human and physical geography, mapping, fieldwork, enquiry, investigation, communication and technology.

Implementation

In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in Geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly or half termly topic. Planning for Geography is a process in which all teachers are involved, to ensure than the school gives full coverage of, ‘The National Curriculum Programmes of Study for Geography 2014’ and the Early Learning Goals for ‘Understanding the World’ in the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Geography teaching at Adlington Primary School involves adapting and extending the curriculum to match all pupils’ needs. Where possible, Geography is linked to class topics. Due to mixed age classes within our school, Geography units are taught on a 2 or 3 year rolling programme. This ensures skill progression between year groups and ensures content coverage, working on the notion of end points in learning. Teachers plan to suit their children’s interests, current events, their own teaching style, and the use of any support staff and the resources available. Planning is supported and accessed from (but not solely from) Oddizzi and the Royal Geographical Society. Teachers use the school’s Geography Progression document to ensure progression is planned in for each year group within the mixed aged classes.

Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement. Educational visits are another opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional geography learning outside the classroom. At Adlington Primary School, the children have had many opportunities to experience geography on educational visits.

Children’s geographical learning starts with the familiar and slowly builds outwards, from Adlington Village, to Chorley, Lancashire, to the UK, to Europe, and South/North America. Their understanding of how their local area fits into the wider world is therefore gradually accrued. Understanding of physical geography also starts with the familiar: from the locality and seaside in KS1 to mountains and volcanoes and rivers in KS2. More in-depth studies allow children to develop their understanding of the interactions between physical and human geography, with units on India and Australia in KS1, Italy in Year 3 and Greece,  South America and North America in Years 4/5/6. Progression within the curriculum is clear: it starts with what is familiar to children and extends outwards. Progression in fieldwork skills is built across units, with local visits in KS1 including Adlington and the beach, to visits in KS2 to Southport/Blackpool, the Lake District and local river fieldwork visits to Yarrow Valley/Cuerden Valley. These offer rich opportunities for mapping, technical drawing and exploring their environment in a concrete physical way. Other units offer scope for children to use digital resources, globes, atlases and Geographical Information Systems to explore regions. Key technical and geographical vocabulary is mapped and used within the planning; allowing children to build a rich bank of geographical language. Links are built with other subjects, predominantly, but not exclusively with writing, art, music, science and history. 

Impact

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. We aspire to promote children’s independence and for all children to take responsibility in their own learning, therefore our lessons are designed to promote self and peer assessment opportunities.

We also measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of geography concepts before and after the unit is taught through prior learning and end of unit tasks.
• 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 scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.