Intent
Geography is essentially about understanding the world we live it. It helps provoke and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. At Consett Junior School, children are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world as well as their place in it. The North East is a wonderful place with so much to explore. We like to take advantage of this and will expose the children to their local area wherever possible, from their local town of Consett to the surrounding woodland of Kielder Forest and the coast at Seaham along with many other places. We like to embed our school values of ‘adventure’ and ‘fun’ in our Geography work. We want our children to enjoy and love learning about Geography by gaining this knowledge and skills, not just through classroom experiences but through the use of fieldwork and educational visits. The Geography curriculum will enable our children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas. We aim to promote the children’s interest of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in Geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught in half-termly topic blocks, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At the beginning of each topic, children are able to convey what they know already as well as what they would like to find out. This informs the programme of study and ensures that lessons are relevant and take account of children’s different starting points. Consideration is given to how greater depth will be taught, learnt and demonstrated within each lesson as well as how learners will be supported in line with the school’s commitment to inclusion.
Cross-curricular links will be made, where appropriate and the local area will be fully utilised to achieve the desired outcomes, with extensive opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice. School trips and fieldwork are provided to give first hand experiences, which enhance children’s understanding of the world beyond their locality.
At the end of each topic, teachers will complete an end of unit assessment grid for their class, which will be returned to the subject coordinator.
A Geography board will be updated regularly with ‘Country of the month’ in which the children will be encouraged to research at home and share what they have found out. Also there will be a ‘Current Issues’ part of the board which will be updated accordingly or half termly to explore physical Geography topics.
Each academic year we will have a whole school Geography day that will explore a current topic in the geographical field.
Our Topics for 2022/2023
Year 3
- Exploring the UK
- Why do we have cities?
- Why is the North East Special?
Year 4
- What can we discover about Europe?
- Why does Italy shake and roar?
- When land meets the Sea?
Year 5
- Fantastic Journeys
- What shapes my world?
- Where my food comes from?
Year 6
- Fantastic Forests
- Destination Sao Paulo
- Additional Fieldwork based activities.
We follow the County Durham scheme – which matches the needs of our children – whilst also fulfilling the National Curriculum requirements.
The progression and skills document is below:
Geography-Progression-of-Skills
Impact
Our Geography Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We aim for our children to develop a greater understanding of their immediate locality as well as an understanding that we live in one small part of a world which is very diverse in terms of both people and places. Children will leave our school with an understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments. It is our aim that the Geography curriculum taught at Consett Junior School equips children with key knowledge and skills , as set out in the National Curriculum, but also with a sense of awareness of themselves as people within a wide world and the impact that they, as people, can have upon the world in which they live.
