Our Vision for Geography

It is our belief that the provision of Geography within our setting should meet the needs of each and every one of our children and be informed by our understanding of their backgrounds and the social, cultural and environmental barriers they face. Our determination to help our children overcome these barriers to learning, by ensuring we offer them appropriate and ambitious curriculum opportunities, is the principal at the core of all of our curriculum. It is our responsibility to equip our children with the cultural capital they require to thrive as informed and thoughtful members of our community. It is our duty to nurture their understanding of how the world they live in has been shaped by the events of the past and to inspire them to realise their own agency to shape their world of the future.

Our Aims for Geography

Through high-quality Geography teaching, we aim to encourage and develop:

• 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 concepts, terms and vocabulary

We aim to inspire pupils to become curious and explorative thinkers with a diverse knowledge of the world; in other words, to think like a geographer. We want pupils to develop the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in various ways, analyse and present their findings and become resourceful, active citizens who will have the skills to contribute to and improve the world around them.

How do we deliver Geography?

We use Kapow and our delivery of Geography focuses on:

• Locational knowledge
• Place knowledge
• Human and physical geography
• Geographical skills and fieldwork

The Kapow Primary scheme is a spiral curriculum, with essential knowledge and skills revisited with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Each unit also contains elements of geographical skills and fieldwork to ensure that fieldwork skills are practised as often as possible.

Curriculum Design in Geography

It is our intention that all of our children work towards building a robust Geographical schema of skills, knowledge and concepts, revisited and applied within and across units and Year Groups in order to facilitate commitment to and retrieval from long-term memory so that they become securely embedded.

Our Intended Coverage

Knowledge and Skills:

Discussion and Debate in Humanities

We believe that all our children should be given the opportunity to discuss and debate a wide range of topics within and across our curriculum, enabling them to form their own opinions and viewpoints. We believe their worldview should be informed not simply by what their teachers have taught them but through their own exploration of the questions our world asks of them and meaningful dialogue with their peers. We allow for this by actively planning opportunities for discussion and debate into our lessons and wider provision and opening up space for all of our children to take the lead, express their thoughts, shape their arguments and be heard.

Courageous Advocacy

At Peterhouse, we believe it is our responsibility to equip our children with the knowledge they require to thrive as informed and thoughtful members of our community and the wider world. We aim to nurture their understanding of how the world they live in has been shaped by the events of the past and to inspire them to realise their own agency to shape their world of the future by safely challenging issues they feel strongly about and being advocates for change. As such, in addition to covering the History and Geography National Curriculums, we also offer our own Courageous Advocacy curriculum.

For more information about Courageous Advocacy, please see our Courageous Advocacy Curriculum Page.

SEND in Geography

• Teachers will follow the school SEND Policy and will incorporate any appropriate Learning Plan targets into the delivery of lessons.
• Our inclusive approach and support and adjustments allow all children to access learning in all lessons regardless of barriers to learning, race, gender, faith, culture specific need or disability.

Assessment in Geography

As with all subjects, our teachers follow the school Assessment Policy. In Geography, the expectation is the following:

• Pre/post assessment and retrieval tasks will be planned into units and individual lessons to provide evidence of progress and of knowledge and concepts from within and across units and Year Groups having been committed to long-term memory.