“For with God, everything is possible” (Matthew 19:26)

Through our continued service to our community and rooted in our Christian Values, the opportunities we provide inspire our children and adults at our school to learn, to grow and to flourish. We are committed to developing our children into confident individuals who make a positive difference through developing a respect for themselves, each other and the world around them. For with God, everything is possible. (Matthew 19:26) 

Our 5 Crown Principles drive our Geography Curriculum

Challenge

Through the ‘challenge’ curriculum driver we want our children relish challenges that being a geographer can bring. We ensure that children experience challenges in all Geography disciplines, within the 4 strands of geography: locational knowledge, place knowledge, environmental, human and physical and map skills and fieldwork.

Resilience

Through the ‘resilience’ curriculum driver, we promote optimism and determination in geography. The children will overcome adversity through certain topics such as natural disasters and environmental issues. Field work is an essential part of each year group’s learning and children must show resilience when collecting, analysing and communicating their geographical data. We strive to ensure children are resilient and determined to look after and respect the world they live in.

Opportunities

Through ‘opportunities’, we raise aspirations to broaden our children’s horizons – opening their eyes to the myriad careers they might pursue. Through careful planning, we invite visitors into school who have careers in geography to inspire the children. We are passionate about global citizenship and give ample opportunities for children to communicate with their friends around the world. “Geography is learnt through the soles of our feet” is our key phrase and we ensure every child experiences fieldwork each year.

Wellbeing

At Queen’s Park, we understand that happiness is linked to personal growth, health and development. We ensure our children are happy, healthy individuals. In geography, we ensure children appreciate the big concepts of environmental impact, sustainable development, cultural awareness and cultural diversity. Our geography curriculum ensures children have an appreciation of the world around them and feel a sense of place as well as feeling a sense of connectedness to their friends around the world. With ‘wellbeing’ as a curriculum driver, we give children the confidence to thrive in a diverse, global society and be respectful citizens with British and Christian Values at the core.

kNowledge

Through the ‘kNowledge’ curriculum driver, we encourage our children to be resourceful learners. It is uniquely challenging and coherent to our children. The knowledge imparted in geography is crafted by our curriculum leader and geography subject leader to ensure that all pupils achieve secure subjective and disciplinary knowledge in geography. All our teachers teach with the aim to ensure pupils have sufficient knowledge to progress through primary school and beyond.

“Geography is learned through the soles of our feet”

“We are a small part of a big, wide world”

Being a geographer means that disciplinary and substantive knowledge complement each other harmoniously. Geography disciplines such as reading maps to automaticity, interpreting a range of sources of geographical information are high profile within our geography curriculum. Through disciplinary literacy, all children read like geographers: reading data, reading maps and using quality non-fiction texts. Reading is the ‘beating heart’ of our geography curriculum.

Geography Long Term Plan

Geography is taught three times throughout the year with a key focus on one of the geography strands.

Progression documents

Our progression documents have been created by the Curriculum Leader and Geography Subject Leader to ensure clear progress in the 4 strands of geography we focus on at Queen’s Park: map skills and field work, locational knowledge, place knowledge and human and physical geography.

The progression documents show key knowledge (substantive knowledge), key vocabulary and key skills (disciplinary knowledge) and assessment outcomes from EYFS – Year 6.

Vocabulary is V.I.T.A.L in Geography

Valued

We value vocabulary in geography and in everything we do.

Identified

Geographical vocabulary is identified by the geography subject leader and is explicitly planned for.

Taught

Vocabulary is explicitly taught in every lesson. Our Crown Planners are used as a teaching tool for key geographical vocabulary and the geography medium term plans include additional vocabulary to be taught.

Applied

Once vocabulary is taught, it is applied. Children apply their vocabulary in their speaking and listening, writing and assessment outcomes in geography.

Learned

Vocabulary is revisited and relearned. Vocabulary sticks in the children’s long-term memory. Lesson by lesson, year by year, children revisit and relearn key geographical vocabulary.

Through an ‘explosion of experiences’, our youngest geographers are exposed to the foundations of their geography learning. Carefully planned geography knowledge, skills and experiences are provided for our children. High quality books, stories and rhymes are the beating heart of our geography curriculum in EYFS. Geographical vocabulary is planned for. Staff are role models in demonstrating geographical vocabulary and this is further enhanced in our excellent provision. The foundations of geography learning in EYFS is linked to Year 1 and beyond.

Year 1 to Year 6

Year on year, children will build upon their geographical knowledge, skills and vocabulary. The curriculum leader and geography subject leader have created a meaningful, sequential learning journey through geography. Careful curriculum thinking and planning ensures that our children have the subject knowledge and components embedded in their long-term memories.

Pedagogy

Both our staff and children are enthusiastic about geography. Through ongoing CPD, we strive to ensure our teachers have expert knowledge of the geography they teach. Our pedagogy is firmly based upon our curriculum intent of embedding concepts into long-term memory so that they are able to be recalled, to ensure substantive and disciplinary knowledge and skills can be applied fluently.

Our ‘Queen’s Park Quality First Teaching’ model ensures that lessons are effectively sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards defined end points.

We firmly believe that all children should have full access, including those with additional needs, to our Geographycurriculum therefore lessons are scaffolded where appropriate in order to meet the needs of all our children

The sequence of lessons across geography follows the same structure:

Each lesson, within the sequence, follows the structure so prior knowledge is constantly revisited and transferred to long term memory.

Our Crown Planners support our children with vocabulary and key knowledge for each unit of work. They enhance children’s understanding of key concepts, present information clearly and promote appropriate discussion.

We understand that we may not see the true impact of our geography curriculum on our children as our geography curriculum is just the beginning of a lifetime of learning.

Our well-constructed and well-taught geography curriculum leads to great outcomes. Our results are a reflection of what our children have learnt. At Queen’s Park, our philosophy is that broad and balanced leads to great outcomes and meeting end points at the end of each key stage. National assessments are useful indicators of the outcomes our children achieve.

We ensure all groups of children are given the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. We strive to ensure that our children are equipped with the skills (through a growth mindset approach) to fluently be able to retrieve key facts from their semantic memory.

The quality of our children’s work, at every stage, is of a high standard. All learning is built towards an end point and at each stage of their education, we prepare our children for the next stage.

We ensure all our children read to a stage appropriate level and fluency. Reading is the beating heart of our geography curriculum. Through disciplinary literacy in geography lessons, the impact of reading on the children’s geographical learning is paramount.

The impact of Queen’s Park geography curriculum is measured through the following:

• Assessment at the end of each unit of work
• Vocabulary and knowledge are assessed at the end of each lesson and at the end of each sequence
• Pupil voice
• Progress evident in children’s books and record of experiences
• Seeking views of parents where appropriate