Geography

Intent

At Christ Church Academy we believe that geography helps provoke and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. Pupils are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world around them. This includes the environments, places near and far, and the processes that create and affect them.

We seek to inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exist across continents, which will remain with them for the rest of their lives. We hope to promote the children’s interest and understanding of diverse places, people and resources, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. It is also important that pupils can make comparisons over time with particular aspects of geography. Ultimately, pupils will develop a knowledge of why a phenomenon occurs (including human and physical processes interacting to influence and change landscapes) and the impacts that it has both in the world around them and contrasting environments (such as sustainability) – ‘thinking like a geographer’.

With regards to geographical skills, we aim to allow pupils to collect, represent and interpret spatial information to acquire first-hand an understanding of the world around them. We aim for them to be able to explain what they have observed using their knowledge on both human and physical geography.

The curriculum is designed to assure breadth, coverage, content and a structure that enables clear progression in knowledge and skills.

Implementation

Geography at Christ Church is taught in topics throughout the year following Oddizzi, which sets out lessons and learning objectives so that pupils return to and build upon prior knowledge and skills. Consideration has been given to ensure progression occurs across topics throughout each year group across the school. At Christ Church pupils will have on average three geography-led topics a year. Pupils begin learning about processes (human or physical) before applying this knowledge to place-based studies. For example, in Year 4 pupils learn about rivers and then rainforests before their final topic being South America – the Amazon – which draws upon both of the previous topics.

Topics are deliberately and carefully ordered so pupils can appreciate how one component relates to another and build upon this in future years. For example, in Year R pupils learn their seasons. This develops in Year 1 as pupils learn about the weather and seasons. This then develops in Year 2 as pupils learn about hot and cold places. In Key Stage 2 this is enhanced further by learning about why certain phenomena happen: in year 3 they learn about climate zones (with a link to farming), in Year 4 they learn about the water cycle and in Year 5 pupils learn about extreme weather events.

Over the course of each topic pupils use Digimaps to enhance their location knowledge to understand the geography of the region being studied that term and consequently the effects of this on the geographical aspect being taught.

Fieldwork - The local area is utilised to achieve the desired outcomes, with opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice. This begins in Year R where pupils have multiple trips in our locality.