Geography Curriculum Statement

Intent

At Silvertrees Academy 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. 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.

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 and aerial photographs.
• To help children understand how the human and physical feature 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 as part of a half termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Silvertrees Academy, 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.

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. The children get chance to explore the local area including investigating the school grounds.

Impact

Our Geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work.

Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments.  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.
• 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 to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.