Rationale

At Ravenscote, we believe that geography stimulates curiosity and imagination and we aim to build upon the child’s ‘personal geography’ by developing geographical skills, understanding and knowledge through studying places and themes. Geography is a valued part of the curriculum at Ravenscote as it provides a means for exploring appreciating and understanding the world in which we live and how it has evolved.

Geography explores the relationship between the earth and its people, an aspect which is more important now than ever before. It allows children to develop their own opinions and awareness of issues within our world and the potential impact that they could have. Furthermore, through different country focuses it allows children to better understand society in other countries and draw comparisons to their own way of life.

Through the planning and implementation of our geography curriculum at Ravenscote, children can develop links between the variety of topics and revisit their prior learning on as regular basis to ensure that the children know more, can do more and most importantly remember more.

Intent

The intent for geography is to encourage and allow children to make sense of their own surroundings through learning about their own locality as well as the interaction between people and the environment. It will further extend children’s curiosity about the world around them, engaging their interest, knowledge and understanding of contrasting localities in Britain, Europe and the rest of the world. This subject provides children with a voice to discuss issues that are at the forefront, it fosters debates and discussions that children thrive on as they begin to form their own opinions and ideas as they move within the school.

Through the learning of human and physical processes, children develop a greater understanding and knowledge as to how places are shaped whilst simultaneously appreciating the differences and similarities in the world, respecting other people’s beliefs, attitudes and values. Geography, at Ravenscote, supports the development of children as global citizens.

One of the key components of our geography curriculum is focused on developing children’s geographical skills and vocabulary that is required to effectively carry out effective geographical enquiry, a fundamental skill within geography which is further supported by encouraging children’s curiosity. This enables children to formulate appropriate questions, develop their research skills and evaluate material to inform opinions. These are skills which are not only important in geography but ones that are transferable for children to use in everyday life, further supporting them.

Furthermore, through the topics taught, we intent to develop the interest and enjoyment of geographical experiences to build confidence and understanding as well as being able to recognise issues concerning the environment and sustainable development. Geography is not a static subject, with the world regularly changing it provides new learning opportunities that engage children and we build upon that to support engagement.

In Year 3, the intended impact is for the children to have a better understanding of the make-up of the UK as well as their local area, studying the history and geographical make up of Camberley while also beginning to develop map skills. Further to this, there is a focus on village settlers to support the children’s understanding of key human and physical aspects of geography at a more local level which can then be built upon in future learning. To support the children’s development of map skills, we have combined that with their learning on road safety to incorporate following map routes and their knowledge of the local area.

In Year 4, the impact is intended to give children a better understanding of the world around them, looking at Europe and then focusing on a region of Europe, more specifically mountain ranges such as the Alps, looking at the human and physical geography, making comparisons to the UK and building on previous learning from Year 3. Also, in Year 4 they focus on one particular area of physical geography being rivers which also links to their science learning on states of matter. With the opportunity of conducting a river study during their residential trip.

In Year 5, the main intention in Geography is to focus and develop the children’s locational knowledge of longitude and latitude and further developing map skills using ordnance survey maps. This year, we have updated our topics to match more closely with our curriculum, ensuring we are looking at regions more closely and in depth by studying key areas with contrasting make ups, which are the Grand Canyon and the Amazon. This allows for the children to compare areas in different continents and draw on their prior learning. This has further cross curricular links with English topics and art topics.

In Year 6, they look at the world on a bigger scale looking at natural disasters, biomes and natural resources, drawing on all of their prior knowledge of the world to focus on themes. Through their prior learning, children will already be aware of some of these themes in relation to specific regions, a great example of how children are supported in remembering more and utilising their skills, to show progression in their time at Ravenscote.

Implementation

Geography explores the relationship the earth and its people through the study of physical and human features of earth, the influence of the environment on human behaviour and lifestyles, and the natural resources people use.

We have used the best research to create a well sequences and progressive curriculum map containing the key concepts children need to be procedurally fluent in to work and think like geographers. These key concepts are divided into the areas of skills that children are taught in their four years at Ravenscote and build progressively during this time, increasing in difficulty and leading to wider discussions and comparisons in upper school.

The key concepts in geography we plan a progression for are as follows:

• Geographical enquiry
• Locational knowledge
• Geographical skills and fieldwork
• Human and physical geography
• Place knowledge

As a subject, humanities are taught once a week with a time allocation of 1 hour, with geography being taught for three half terms of the year. Children assess their work through the use of ‘quick quizzes’ at the end of each lesson. At the beginning of every lesson, the skills being used and developed are discussed and written in their books as well as a discussion on where they have previously used those particular skills. At the end of the lesson, children will rag rate their skill on their skill progression map to show their understanding, with red demonstrating that the children have limited understanding and confidence in that skill, yellow showing that the child has some understanding but requires more support and green representing a good understanding and confidence in that skill. The penultimate lesson of at unit is an assessment style lesson where teachers use a reflection sheet to assess what the children know but also to see if there are any misconceptions that can be addressed in the final lesson.

As a way to help motivate the children, ‘Humanities Heroes’ awards are presented to one child every half term, in each year group. Children are chosen based on their contribution to lessons, presentation and knowledge organiser content. Examples of their work are also shared with the wider school community to support others in their learning and to show expectations.

At Ravenscote, we use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our geography lessons. We use whole-class teaching methods and we combine these with enquiry-based research activities. We encourage children to ask as well as answer geographical questions. Wherever possible, we try to involve the children in ‘real’ geographical activities such as problem-solving environmental problems to provide them with the opportunity to apply their learning and skills

We offer the opportunity to use a variety of data, such as maps, statistics, graphs, pictures, video, aerial photographs as well as enabling children to use ICT in geography where its purpose is to enhance learning. Within lessons, children take part in debates and can present their research and findings to the class.

Fieldwork provides pupils at Ravenscote with authentic learning experiences, immersing them in ‘doing geography’ in real places. This helps them understand what it means to be a ‘real geographer’ and transfer the skills they have learnt in the classroom to a real-life situation through enquiry learning. There are fieldwork opportunities across the whole school throughout the year. Year 3 conduct a local walk using map skills and exploring examples of both human and physical geography in the local area. Year 4 conduct a river study while on a residential educational visit to Hooke Court. Year 5 explore mapping of the Ravenscote school grounds and Year 6 take their study of biomes to the Frimley fuel allotments. Every year group also develops their fieldwork skills before and during an educational visit by using maps and aerial photographs to explore the location of the visit. During the visit they investigate what the place is like and what kind of human and physical features are present. Fieldwork through enquiry questions is the primary focus of a whole school geography curriculum day where each year group spends the day conducting a variety of fieldwork tasks asking geographical questions. They work collaboratively to investigate, carry out and reflect on the results of a variety of enquiry questions. Fieldwork also provide cross-curricular links with the P.E curriculum. Pupils participate in orienteering as part of the Outdoor Adventurous Activities topic in P.E where they can embed their map skills outside the classroom in a fun engaging and physical way.

The objectives of teaching geography in the school are based on the requirements of the National Curriculum programmes of study for key stage 2. Throughout the topics, previous learning is regularly revisited and at the beginning of each new unit, children have the opportunity to add what they already know onto their knowledge organiser as well as what they might like to find out in the geographical enquiry section. The knowledge organisers allow for children to display and record their learning in a way that is meaningful to them and these will follow the children through their time at Ravenscote to support their learning of new topics.

Impact

By the end of each topic, children will have a deeper understanding of different places in the world and will have developed their enquiry skills to ask more thought-provoking questions, in order to be better prepared to debate and discuss issues on a wider scale. Through each of the topics and the links made to their prior learning as a result of questioning, children will remember more and develop the skills to tap into that knowledge to support their new learning. The progressive curriculum will allow children to continuously build on their previous learning and draw on it when making comparisons, particularly when it comes to human and physical geography. Each learn, the children will learn and new and exciting places and through the range of activities in lessons be able to demonstrate their newfound knowledge, skills and links to previous topics or places studied.

With the introduction of a wider range of fieldwork over the last couple of years, it has enabled children to engage more and foster a greater passion as the subject comes to life more and children gain a greater understanding of how geography linked to their everyday life. It provides greater opportunities for more hands-on experiences and in turn will develop children’s critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This will support the children in their life skills, better preparing them for the world through these activities.

The impact of geography will be seen in a number of different ways, through the high-quality planning and delivery of lessons, with enthusiasm, encouraging the children to become excited about their topic which will be evident during pupil conferencing. As well as this, the wide range of activities and work completed will demonstrate good progress and the skills used will be recognisable.

The impact of our geography teaching will provide the children with a greater awareness of geographical issues but also understanding. Children will be better equipped to seek answers and reflect on the world around them. It will equip children with the skills and attributes of being global citizens and foster their curiosity about the world.

Please click here to access our Geography Policy document.

 

Year 3

“I like finding places I know on maps”

“My favourite thing is when we design our own settlement and draw the map symbols of the features we want there”

Year 4

“I enjoy that Geography lessons are active – we get up and move around while we are learning”

“Getting wet while measuring a river depth on our Hooke Court residential with my friends was the best!”

Year 5

“I really enjoy when we use the Ipads to look at digital maps like Digimaps. You can really zoom in and see details – it’s so clever!”

“Learning about advantages and disadvantages of tourism makes you think about your own holidays”

Year 6

“I like learning about other countries and knowing that they are probably learning about our country too”

“Designing an eco-house and thinking about how we can improve things in the future is so important.”

The following useful websites may aid with your child's learning.