Geography
Geography Intent
At Byron Primary School we offer children a high quality geography curriculum, giving them a sense of place - both where they live and in the wider world. They learn about what our local area has to offer and compare and contrast that to places in the rest of the UK, Europe and beyond. We aim to inspire curiosity and fascination about the world and its people by encouraging children to ask questions and challenge their thinking.
Wherever possible, our geography curriculum is enhanced by trips and visitors, as these bring the curriculum alive to our children. Fieldwork is a vital part of our geography curriculum as it gives the children first hand experiences where they can apply the skills learnt.
Work is differentiated to include all pupils and our trips and visitors enable every child to experience fieldwork first hand.
By deepening our children's knowledge of geography, we will help them to understand how the world has grown and changed over time, the diversity of people's lives and the possibility for us to live sustainably for the future.
Geography Implementation
Geography at Byron is taught as part of a cross-curricular topic which seeks to identify Geography as a discrete subject whilst establishing clear and specific links to both other curriculum areas and the wider world. 'Understanding the World' involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.
Our Geography curriculum is designed so that children start with ‘themselves’ and their school or local area before working out to areas or regions of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. We have developed a progression of skills with each year group, which enables pupils to build on and develop their knowledge and skills each year. Cross-curricular links are planned for, with other subjects such as Maths, Writing and Computing being incorporated within geography lessons and the curriculum.
Location knowledge, fieldwork and map work are woven throughout the Geography topics. Effective use of educational visits, local fieldwork and visitors are planned, to enrich and enhance the pupil’s learning experiences within the Geography curriculum. In-depth fieldwork opportunities are greatly amplified throughout bespoke local area units where children go out into the field to conduct observations, surveys, investigations and field sketches. The use of maps and compasses enhances this experience.
Children are given a knowledge organiser at the start of each unit which details some key information, key questions and vocabulary. This is not used as part of an assessment, but to support children with their acquisition of knowledge and are used as a reference document. These are also sent home with the children.
At the start of each unit children will review previous learning and will have the opportunity to share what they already know about a current topic. In order to support children in their ability to know more and remember more, there are regular opportunities to review the learning that has taken place in previous units as well as previous lessons.
Geography - Impact
Our geography curriculum offers high quality and well planned lessons which encourage progression. Geographical questioning helps pupils to gain a coherent knowledge and understanding of the world and its people. Our engagement with the local environment ensures that children learn through varied and first-hand experiences of the world around them. Through various fieldwork activities, enquiry questions and themed units of work children will have the understanding that geography impacts upon our lives daily.
The impact of our Geography curriculum is measured in a variety of ways: questioning during lesson time including use of retrieval practice questioning techniques, marking children’s written work, listening to child-led discussion, interviewing pupils across the school about their learning, book trawls and using images/videos of children’s practical learning.
Below is the Progression of Skills for Geography taught at Byron.