Curriculum – Geography
At Oakley Cross our Geography curriculum has been designed to engage and enthuse our children with the world around them and to develop meaningful skills as geographers, enabling them to understand how the world today has been shaped by physical and human influences.
Intent
The Geography Curriculum in our school aims to inspire pupil curiosity about their world and to engage them in outdoor learning and geographical inquiry. By the end of Year 6, we intend our pupils to be confident geographers who have a good level of place and locational knowledge and a good understanding of the processes, physical and human that have shaped their world. We are also developing the children’s ability to apply geographical skills to enable them to confidently communicate their findings and geographical understanding to a range of audiences. We are committed to providing children with opportunities to investigate and make enquiries about their local area of West Auckland and the wider county of Durham so that they can develop a real sense of who they are, their heritage and what makes our local area unique and special.
Implementation
The curriculum has been sequenced to enable pupils to gradually widen their sense of scale from their immediate geography to the global world.
- In EYFS the children will know similarities and differences in relation to places, objects, materials and living things. They talk about the features of their own immediate environment and how environments might vary from one another.
- In KS1 the children focus on their immediate surroundings at the school and close locality whilst gaining a brief overview of the world around them including the UK, continents and oceans, and the hot and cold regions of the earth.
- In KS2, the children’s place knowledge extends from investigating West Auckland through to learning about other regions of the UK, Europe, the Americas and then the world. These studies provide opportunities for in-depth comparisons of physical and human features.
Threaded through the curriculum are opportunities to explore aspects of physical geography with an opportunity to revisit these in Year 6. Throughout KS1 and KS2, map and fieldwork knowledge is developed through a series of field based inquiries.
For a copy of our Long Term Plan for Geography and the key skills we aim for children to acquire over time please follow the link below.
Our children will become confident geographers with:
- An enthusiasm for their local area and a curiosity for the world around them and the people who live there.
- An excellent knowledge of where places are and what they are like, both in Britain and the wider world.
- A comprehensive understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected.
- The ability to reach clear conclusions and explain their findings.
- A growing understanding of how humans affect the planet and ways in which we can help.
We want children to question the impact of their learning and have posed the question ‘How does the world around us shape and enrich our lives?’