Intent:
At St Mary’s CE Primary and Nursery, our core values of Collaboration, Ambition, Respect, Positivity, Integrity and Empowerment are underpinned by the value of peace. These values underpin everything we do.
We welcome children, their parents and carers into a friendly, happy and hardworking environment where respect for others, positive attitudes towards work and behaviour are encouraged and nurtured.
‘Be Ready, Be Respectful and Be Safe’
St Mary’s is a school where all children are valued and where all staff work hard to help every child. This is central to our teaching and learning offer where we want the children to be the best they can be.
At St Mary’s CE Primary School, we value the importance of Geography in shaping the children’s perspective of the world and moulding them into becoming global citizens. Geography is much more than just knowing where something is in the world, it is a subject which enables children to make connections between places and understand the impact of decisions across a global scale. Knowing and understanding more about locational, human and physical features supports children in having a greater awareness and understanding of themselves and the wider world. Children’s disciplinary knowledge is developed through concepts such as place, space, scale, independence as well as sustainable development, cultural understanding and diversity. We aim to inspire our children to be inquisitive and want to find out more about the world they live in by asking and answering questions about the world we live in.
We provide a curriculum which allows children to learn at a local, regional and global scale. We ensure there is clear progression of both substantive and disciplinary knowledge across all strands of the national curriculum. Our curriculum incorporates opportunities for children to learn both inside and outside of the classroom with fieldwork being an integral part of what we offer our students so that they can make connections between the outside world and what they have learnt in the classroom. The content we have selected has been carefully planned to ensure that children have ample opportunity to revisit existing knowledge and build new knowledge alongside this. In addition to this, key concepts such as place, space, scale and interdependence are regularly revisited and embedded within our blocks. The curriculum is carefully planned to ensure systematic progression in physical and human processes, environmental interaction and sustainable development, cultural understanding and diversity. We aspire for our children to think like geographers and to observe, collect and present data to support their viewpoints of their environment.
It is intended that when children leave St Mary’s CE Primary School, they will have developed a fascination with the world around them and will have a natural curiosity to explore other countries and cultures. This curiosity will continue to develop during their time at secondary school.
Implementation:
The 2014 National Curriculum outlines the expectation that all pupils:
develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
collect, analyze and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.
These aims will underpin all teaching of Geography at St Mary’s CE Primary School and Nursery.
Detailed long and medium planning is in place to ensure engaging curriculum content and systematic revisiting of key concepts and bodies of knowledge to deepen learning.
Throughout each block of study, teachers carefully plan to embed and assess the children’s knowledge using a range of retrieval strategies. We ensure application of knowledge in various contexts, adapting lessons where necessary so that children develop schemas and both substantive and disciplinary knowledge is stored in the long-term memory.
Children in Foundation Stage have their progress tracked using the EYFS curriculum. Age related expectation levels are reported to parents at the end of the reception year.
Impact:
Within the Geography curriculum, it is our aim to create curious learners that are excited and motivated to learn about the earth, places and people, including both the human and physical processes that take place.
We strive to give children the real and relevant experiences that allow children to make connections and understand Geography on a deeper level. By ensuring children are given the chance to explore and investigate both within their local Geography and further afield, children begin to apply skills taught in context, and become motivated in finding out more.
Part of the Geography curriculum in observing and investigating, which is a key skill to have in all areas of the National Curriculum, something we strive to ensure children are confident with.
We hope that children are equipped with the knowledge to understand how our world is like it is today and what other changes are possible in the future.
Progression grids for Geography: St Mary’s Geography LTP Cycle A and B- New
History and Geography Cycle A
History and Geography Cycle B
Example of Medium Term Progression:
Geography Scheme Spring Cycle B