Geography
Our ambitious curriculum is skills and knowledge rich and has been developed using the curriculum map from Primary Knowledge Curriculum combined with subject leader expertise. This has created the 'Guardian Angels Catholic Curriculum', ensuring the best possible provision to meet the needs of all of our pupils.
This means the knowledge children will gain has been carefully specified, sequenced coherently and builds over time. As children work through our geography curriculum, they will know more, understand more and remember more about the world around them. A good geographical understanding relies on firm foundations of knowledge and skills. The skills our curriculum develops, like the knowledge, are specified, ordered coherently and progress over time. This curriculum structure helps pupils to deepen their understanding of physical and human geographical processes, fostering curiosity and fascination for the world we live in.
Geography enables all learners to experience the beauty, awe and wonder of God’s world and to develop an awareness of their place in it. All places and spaces have a history behind them shaped by humans, location, climate, and politics. Geography gives us a spatial awareness of the globe and serves to form respectful attitudes that serve to remind our children that we are stewards and not masters of creation.
Theological influences help to shape the cosmological understandings of the world as we recognize that we are a global community with a global interdependence, accountability, and responsibility for the common good of all people. Our Stewardship must reflect our understanding that the planet is our irreplaceable home.
Our substantive concepts are: place, scale, interdependence, physical and human processes, environmental impact and cultural diversity
Our disciplinary concepts are: map skills, fieldwork, similarities and differences, research and enquiry, cause and consequence
By the end of EYFS children will:
Begin to understand how they are part of their own locality which is part of a bigger world. They will learn about different people and communities and use speaking, listening and understanding to develop and explore these in greater detail linked to broad overarching topics.
By the end of Key Stage 1 children will:
Use and make a range of geographical resources such as photos and maps to locate features in their locality and the world. They will understand the principle of directions and look at land use, climate and physical features of Great Britain and other locations in the world. Children will begin to understand also their own impact on the world.
By the end of Key Stage 2 children will:
Be able to compare their own locality to different locations around the world. They will conduct simple fieldwork to exemplify common geographical processes and develop an understanding of map work such that these features can be examined and identified in a wider context. Children will gain knowledge of the impact of humans on the landscape and recognise the impact of themselves and that of nature in shaping the world in which they live.