Geography

Geography at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary School

Vision:

We aspire for our children to be explorers, to be global and to be outdoors.

Intent:

At St. Augustine’s we want our children to have a curiosity and fascination of the world that will stay with them through their lives. We understand how it has never been more important for children to have a comprehensive global understanding of our world and the people and cultures that inhabit it. Through this understanding, children will develop respect for the physical world and the vast scope of cultures that make up our diverse planet.

We aim to develop our children’s interest in a variety of physical and human environments in the wider world by expanding horizons beyond their local community. Opportunities to use a range of investigative and problem solving skills inside the classroom will be rooted in each topic area. These skills will also be put into practice outside the classroom through local field work and exciting educational visits.

Our primary focus is for all children to have a deeper understanding of the world, people, places and environments and how they are changing over time.

Long term overview- Geography

Our Geography draws upon several powerful sources of knowledge. It is our intention that pupils become a little more expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating and connecting substantive and disciplinary geographical knowledge.

Substantive knowledge– this is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content. Common misconceptions are explicitly revealed as non-examples and positioned against known and accurate content as pupils become more expert in their understanding. Misconceptions are challenged carefully and in the context of the substantive and disciplinary knowledge. In Geography, it is recommended that misconceptions are not introduced too early, as pupils need to construct a mental model in which to position new knowledge.
Disciplinary knowledge– this is the use of that knowledge and how children construct understanding through processes, evidence, pattern seeking, reasoning and explaining change. We call it ‘Thinking Geographically’.

Geographical analysis is developed through selecting, organising and integrating knowledge through reasoning and inference making in response to structured questions and challenges.

Substantive concepts include place, space, scale, interdependence, physical and human processes, environmental impact, sustainable development, cultural awareness and cultural diversity. Concepts such as change through erosion are taught through explicit vocabulary instruction as well as through the direct content and context of the study.

To be successful geographers children should use:

Be engaged and enjoy geography
think of their own questions
search for their own answers
talk, watch, and listen to people, animals, plants, and places
think about who they are and the effects of their actions on the rest of the world.
Be able to use maps effectively to locate and identify themselves and locations further away.
Be able to physically read and follow maps to travel from one place to another eg. Orienteering.

Implementation:

Our Geography equips pupils to become ‘more expert’ with each study and grow an ever broadening and coherent mental model of the subject. This guards against superficial, disconnected and fragmented geographical knowledge. Specific and associated geographical vocabulary is planned sequentially and cumulatively from Year 1 to Year 6. High frequency, multiple meaning words (tier 2) are taught and help make sense of subject specific words (tier 3). Each learning module in geography has a vocabulary module with teacher guidance, tasks and resources.

Geography lessons follow our Teaching and Learning model. Children are encouraged to recall learning from the previous lesson.

At St. Augustine’s, we believe in the importance of educational visits and understand how out of school learning is important to our pupils, ensuring that children’s learning is engaging, relevant and memorable. Our local area is also fully utilised, with opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice.

EYFS

In the early years, we provide opportunities for the children to build on their understanding of the world. This includes their local area as well as the wider world around them. Early Years staff aim to get children ready for disciplinary knowledge explored in more detail in KS1 and KS2. We facilitate opportunities for the children to recognise what it means to be a geographer. We do this through the use of simple maps – reading them, following them, creating them. Through high quality texts, we talk about weather and climate in different countries, landmarks and basic infrastructure.

Impact:

Pupil’s leave St. Augustine’s with a love of being outdoors, exploring the world around them whilst having an awareness of their global neighbours and the differences between countries near and far. Children leave with curiosity and respect of the world an are enthusiastic about exploring it further. The key skills they have developed combined with the knowledge they have acquired will help pupils make a valuable contribution to society.