Intent

At Radcliffe on Trent Infant and Nursery School our Geography teaching aims to inspire our pupils and develop a curiosity about the world around them. We aim to develop the children’s understanding of the interaction of people and the physical and human environments in which they live whilst developing the key concept of the centrality of place. Our learners will also have an understanding of change and continuity whilst exploring diverse places, people resources and environments. Children will be given opportunities to develop key geographical skills using a range of resources and strategies such as fieldwork, looking at maps and stories. Developing a good understanding of their own locality is extremely important at our school and we refer to our local area within our topics, making learning relevant to all children.  

Implementation

At Radcliffe on Trent Infant and Nursery School we have an enquiry-based curriculum which is taught sequentially building upon the children’s geographical knowledge and understanding. This begins with our youngest learners in our school nursery and we ensure that throughout school, topics are chosen to give our children the opportunity to make links to geographical concepts and to retain, revisit and build upon this knowledge. Children will develop knowledge about the world in which we live. This begins in EYFS and our Nursery children will be given the opportunities to understand their story, their community and their familiar environment. For our Reception children we enable them with the skills to observe and compare environments including their local area, whilst continuing to develop their sense of place and self. In KS1 our children will extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and then compare the UK with areas beyond Europe. As our learners move through school our children will begin to understand increasingly complex subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and will develop an increasing range of map reading skills and field work to enhance their locational awareness. They will also develop their ability to use an increasing range of geographical equipment effectively to build their knowledge of the wider world. Additionally, we ensure meaningful links are made to other curriculum areas throughout our topics and key areas of human and physical geography will be returned to regularly within each year and key stage. This is to ensure geographical knowledge and skills are built upon and embedded into each child’s scheme of learning.

Impact Statement

In Geography, progress is measured through a child’s ability to know, recall and explain their understanding and apply the skills they have gained during each topic. During Geography lessons, teachers assess their pupils against each learning objective.

In our school our pupils know:

• How to be respectful about the differences between themselves and other people, including those from other cultures or countries 
• How to find information from different sources including maps, atlases and the internet
• Where they live and compare this with other areas both in the UK and in other parts of the world.

The use of key questions ensures that there are opportunities for the children’s progress to be assessed during each topic. Children share their learning through answering geographical questions through review activities such as class assemblies, presentations and videos on SEESAW. The attainment and progress can be tracked across school using our Geography topic assessment spreadsheets.

The impact of the Geography curriculum can be seen across school with the increased profile of Geography. Comparisons between our locality and that of others can be seen in Learning Journals in year two while learning environments across the school contain Geographical vocabulary displayed, spoken and applied by the children alongside maps that can be accessed in the classroom provision.  Locality walks and explorations of their school environment provide children with opportunities for the children to apply the skills they have gained and learn how to respect and care for their local area.