Intent 

At St Dunstan’s, we aim to inspire pupils to become curious and explorative thinkers with diverse world knowledge and think like a geographer. We want pupils to develop the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in various ways, and analyse and present their findings.  

We aim to build an awareness of how Geography shapes our lives at multiple levels and over time. We hope to develop pupils into resourceful, active citizens with the skills to contribute to and improve the world around them whilst providing a focus within our curriculum for understanding and resolving the issues concerning the environment and sustainable development. 

Through our rich and engaging curriculum, we provide opportunities for our pupils to encounter different societies and cultures, leading them to realise how nations rely on each other. This encourages pupils to develop an understanding and awareness of their place in the world, their values, and their rights and responsibilities to others and the environment. 

Our Geography curriculum encourages the following: 

• A strong focus on developing both geographical skills and knowledge. 

• Critical thinking, with the ability to ask perceptive questions and explain and analyse evidence. 

• The development of fieldwork skills across each year group. 

• A deep interest and knowledge of pupils’ locality and how it differs from other areas of the world. 

• A growing understanding of geographical terms and vocabulary. 

All pupils can meet the end of key stage attainment targets in the National Curriculum through our Geography curriculum.  

Implementation 

  The National curriculum organises the Geography attainment targets under four strands: 

• Locational knowledge 

• Place knowledge 

• Human and physical geography  

• Geographical skills and fieldwork 

The Geography curriculum at St Dunstan’s is sequenced so that there is a clear progression of skills and knowledge of these four strands across each phase. Our spiral curriculum ensures essential knowledge and skills are revisited with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Locational knowledge, in particular, will be reviewed in each unit to coincide with our belief that this will consolidate children’s understanding of key concepts, such as scale and place, in Geography. Cross-curricular links are included throughout each unit, allowing children to make connections and apply their Geography skills to other areas of learning. 

Enquiry questions form the basis for each of our units, meaning that pupils gain a solid understanding of geographical knowledge and skills by applying them to answer enquiry questions. We have designed these questions to be open-ended with no preconceived answers, and therefore they are genuinely purposeful and engage pupils in generating a real change. In attempting to answer them, children learn how to collect, interpret and present data using geographical methodologies and make informed decisions by applying their geographical knowledge. 

Each unit contains geographical skills and fieldwork elements to ensure that fieldwork skills are practised as often as possible. Each unit follows an enquiry cycle that maps out the fieldwork process of questioning, observing, measuring, recording, and presenting to reflect the elements mentioned in the National curriculum. This ensures children will learn how to decide on an area of enquiry, plan to measure data using a range of methods, capture the data and present it to a range of appropriate stakeholders in various formats. Fieldwork includes smaller opportunities on the school grounds to larger-scale visits to investigate physical and human features. Developing fieldwork skills within the school environment and revisiting them in multiple units enables pupils to consolidate their understanding of various methods. It also gives children the confidence to evaluate methodologies without always having to leave the school grounds and does so within the confines of a familiar place. This makes fieldwork regular and accessible while giving children a thorough understanding of their locality, providing a solid foundation when comparing it with other places. 

Our geography lessons incorporate various teaching strategies, from independent tasks to paired and group work, including practical hands-on, computer-based and collaborative tasks. This variety means lessons are engaging and appeal to those with various learning styles. Differentiated guidance is available for every lesson to ensure that all pupils can access learning, and opportunities to stretch pupils’ learning are available when required. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging the recall of key facts and vocabulary. 

At St Dunstan’s, our foundation subjects follow a 2-year cycle and lessons are taught in ‘blocks’ – we believe our blocking of foundation subjects allows children to fully immerse themselves in the subject, deepening and embedding learning and understanding of the subject. 

Impact 

An enquiry-based approach to learning allows teachers to assess children against the National Curriculum expectations for Geography. The impact of our curriculum is regularly monitored through formative and summative assessment opportunities. 

At the end of Key Stage 2, pupils will leave school equipped with skills and knowledge to confidently study Geography at Key Stage 3. We hope to shape children into curious and inspired geographers with respect and appreciation for the world around them, alongside an understanding of the interconnection between the human and the physical. 

The expected impact of our Geography curriculum is that children will: 

• Compare and contrast human and physical features to describe and understand similarities and differences between various places in the UK, Europe and the Americas. 

• Name, locate and understand where and why the physical elements of our world are located and how they interact, including processes over time relating to climate, biomes, natural disasters and the water cycle. 

• Understand how humans use the land for economic and trading purposes, including how the distribution of natural resources has shaped this. 

• Develop an appreciation for how humans are impacted by and have evolved around the physical geography surrounding them and how humans have impacted the environment, both positively and negatively. 

• Develop a sense of location and place around the UK and some areas of the wider world using the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and keys on maps, globes, atlases, aerial photographs and digital mapping. 

• Identify and understand how various elements of our globe create positioning, including latitude, longitude, the hemispheres, and the tropics and how time zones work, including night and day. 

• Present and answer their own geographical enquiries using planned and specifically chosen methodologies, collected data and digital technologies. 

• Meet the end-of-key stage expectations outlined in the National Curriculum for Geography.