Intent

It is our intent that Geography curriculum within Holy Cross enables children to make progress and to thrive in their study of the subject. Each subject curriculum and its associated teaching approaches needs to secure the highest possible quality of education for pupils. Four closely related curricular attributes – scope, rigour, coherence and sequencing – are our measures of quality. These four curriculum attributes are the means and measure of strong curricula because they ensure that the subject properly reflects the academic practices, outside of school, to which the subject refers and they ensure that this is organised in the best way to allow pupils develop an in-depth understanding within Geography. We also intend for children to become passionate and knowledgeable about our local community and beyond, by learning through experiences in practical and fieldwork activities.  

Implementation

Within Holy Cross, we have a carefully designed framework in order to ensure all children reach their full potential within Geography. Within Early Years, children develop their understanding of the physical world and community. They regularly visit parks, libraries and museums in order to enhance their understanding.  Our youngest children will develop their vocabulary and the theme of diversity through listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems. Our KS1 curriculum has been carefully designed in order to develop the children’s vocabulary and understanding of their locality and the wider world. The children's locational knowledge is revisited throughout the KS1 curriculum so that children develop the capacity to know and recall where places are. By the end of KS1 children will have developed their place knowledge by understanding Geographical similarities and differences through the knowledge of physical and human features within their local area and other places in the world. We aim to provide children with essential Geographical skills, fieldwork opportunities and foundational knowledge in order to engage with the in-depth studies within KS2.

Our KS2 curriculum is delivered through Opening Worlds. Through in-depth studies, the children will develop their substantive knowledge and disciplinary skills. This is delivered through four key components;

• Scope: ambitiously broad in scope, ensuring that pupils gain an in-depth knowledge of diverse reference points on which to draw from across the world. Children will gain a multi-faceted understanding of migration and settlement. Through revisiting these issues, they will lay a solid foundation for understanding that Britain as we know it is the result of migrations over millennia, that this has always included diverse ethnicities.
• Rigor: meticulous in rigour through responsive to up-date scholarship in history, geography, culture, religion and worldviews, and related fields such as philosophy and social science; current questions being pursued and the insights of scholars in these fields.
• highly coherent: intricate links have been built within and across subjects so that nothing sits in isolation but rather is supported and enriched both horizontally and vertically
• Sequencing: the curriculum is very carefully sequenced so that pupils’ ability to build a comparison and reach a critical judgement, say, across sustainable use of natural resources or the impact on climate change by Year 5, will have been served by the repeated and explicit focus on all the foundational geographical knowledge that serves informed understanding of climate change/resource use – the role of rainforests, the behaviour of oceans, the impact of land use

Impact

• think about geographical questions using concepts of place, scale, diversity and variation over space, change, interaction and relationships; pupils tackle questions in which they solve problems concerning place, pattern, position and processes
•  collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that develop their geographical skills and deepen their understanding of geographical processes;
• interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and digital technologies;
•  communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

River Models

We have been learning all about rivers in Year 3. This week we used dough to make models of a young river. We included details such as the rivers source, load and the spurs that could not be eroded away.

Human and Physical features of Geography

Today year two learnt the difference between Physical and Human features of Geography. Human and physical features are things that you can see all around you. Physical features like seas, mountains and rivers are natural. They would be here even if there were no people around. Human features like houses, roads and bridges are things that have been built by people. We completed a sorting activity and came up with definitions for each feature.

Playdough Maps

Year two have begin their Geography topic by revising their learning of the four countries and capital cities of the UK. We used maps and atlases to locate these. We created playdough maps and named and located the seas that surround the UK.