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Intent Statement
At Great Linford Primary School, we believe that geography enables children to understand their place in the world and the connections between a variety of environments. Our geography curriculum is underpinned by the National Curriculum whilst also being adapted for our school, building on links to other subjects where possible. We have personalised our curriculum by ensuring that the geography units taught in each year group enable the children to develop their writing and reading skills using quality texts Our progression document outlines the unit coverage for all year groups alongside detailing the progression of skills and vocabulary. Our curriculum ensures that pupils are taught the full range of disciplinary and substantive knowledge in a sequential manner enabling them to develop their understanding of locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork. Pupils are encouraged to develop their curiosity to find out more about the human and physical world and motivated to understand their sense of responsibility in taking small steps to protect the future of the Earth. Implementation
We teach geography in units so that each child will learn about three areas of geography each year. We have identified the key skills and knowledge within each topic and these are clearly mapped on our medium-term plans, alongside our learning objective, for teachers to use when planning their lessons. Our medium-term plans also detail the vocabulary, taken from our progression document, that the children should be explicitly taught. At the beginning of each lesson, we check the prior knowledge of the children via our memory flashback slides. These link back to previous geography lessons and units in order to ensure that each unit is recapped. We also focus on explicit vocabulary teaching via ‘I say, we say, you say’, based on vocabulary identified on our medium-term plans. At the beginning of each unit, the children stick a knowledge organiser into their books which details key vocabulary and key knowledge that the children should know. This is used as a learning aid throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, all children complete a post assessment with one question based on each lesson taught. This ensures that the children have retained the key knowledge taught. Impact
Progress will be assessed through flashback questions at the beginning of every lesson that aim to assess understanding and embed knowledge. We also conduct assessments at the end of every unit based on the knowledge that has been taught according to our medium term plans. Teachers will use this information to analyse how effectively pupils are achieving or exceeding expectations and to adapt their planning accordingly. Teachers then evaluate the development of skills, providing specific ongoing feedback to pupils about their achievement and what to do next to develop further. Progression
Subject Days
Subject specific days celebrated across the year. A mixture of internal theme days and external trips are closely matched to the Geography topics that are studied in your child's year group. During the parent meeting at the beginning of each academic year, these planned 'WOW days' will be shared with you. These help provide context to the children's learning and help to bring alive more abstract concepts which might be further removed from their own day-to-day lives. Local Community Links
As part of the Geography curriculum, children have the opportunity to develop fieldwork skills throughout their time at Great Linford Primary School. This begins with walks around the school grounds from Early Years and progresses to local walks around Great Linford to explore the diverse geographical features of our school's setting: from the urban areas of Milton Keynes as a city, to the Parks Trust areas and canal route. |
Geography in our school... | ||
Our Curriculum Journey
