Geography

Geography at St Mary's Catholic Primary school

Our approach to teaching and learning in geography focuses on making the subject engaging, interactive, and relevant to children's everyday experiences. It encourages curiosity about the world by using hands-on activities, maps, globes and digital resources. Lessons help children to develop spatial awareness, critical thinking, and environmental responsibility. Fieldwork and local studies play a key role, allowing pupils to explore their surroundings and apply geographical skills in real-life contexts. The approach fosters inquiry-based learning, where children ask questions, investigate places, and develop a deeper understanding of the world around them.

Intent:

At St Mary’s, our curriculum aims to ignite children’s curiosity about the world and its people.  We want our pupils to have an understanding of the wider world, generate and answer questions, locate places, identify similarities and differences, carry out field work and be able to explain processes and human impact using geographical vocabulary.

Our geography curriculum has been designed to cover the knowledge, skills and understanding as set out in the National Curriculum

In order to ensure that pupils develop a secure knowledge that they can build on, our geography curriculum is organised into a progression model that outlines the knowledge, skills and vocabulary to be taught in a sequentially coherent way which builds on and makes connections with prior knowledge and learning.

Locational Knowledge; Place knowledge; Human and Physical Geography; Geographical Skills and Fieldwork are all mapped out to ensure that pupils build on secure prior knowledge. This enables children to know more and remember more.

Implementation:

The teaching, learning and sequencing of the Geography curriculum is as follows:

A thematic curriculum approach has been implemented to ensure coverage of knowledge and progression in skills and concepts.  Pupils study three different elements of Geography in an academic year.

In EYFS and KS1, children will focus on developing a broad knowledge of the world, the United Kingdom and their own locality. They will develop subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography, and begin to use geographical skills to enhance their locational awareness.  This will ensure a firm foundation for KS2 History.

In KS2, the Geography curriculum is structured in a way that allows for pupils to extend their knowledge and understanding to include the United Kingdom, Europe, North and South America.  This includes the location and characteristics of a range of the world’s most significant human and physical features. This allows pupils to develop their use of geographical knowledge, understanding and skills to enhance their locational and place knowledge.

The progression of knowledge and skills are set out in order to build and develop the following concepts:

- Geographical knowledge

- Geographical understanding; human and physical geography

- Geographical skills and enquiry

What a typical Geography lesson looks like

Rewind: The lesson begins with a quick recap of previous learning, using map work, questioning, or a short discussion to activate prior knowledge. This could involve reviewing key vocabulary, recalling facts about a place, or linking to previous topics.

Teach It: The teacher introduces new content through engaging methods such as storytelling, maps, videos, or real-world case studies. Key concepts are explained, and pupils are encouraged to ask questions and make connections to their own experiences.

Practise It: Pupils take part in hands-on activities such as group discussions, map-reading tasks, fieldwork, or creative projects. They might analyse geographical data, compare different locations, or work collaboratively to solve real-world problems.

Assessment: The lesson ends with a short formative assessment, such as a quiz, a reflection activity, or a simple written response, to check understanding. Teachers provide feedback and identify areas for further exploration in future lessons.

Impact:

- Children are engaged, curious and resilient in Geography lessons and relish the challenge and opportunities for fun that the subject offers.

-  Children have a good locational knowledge of their own locality, the United Kingdom and the wider world

- Children are aware of the physical geography of different locations around the world, and how this changes over time.

- Children are aware of the human geography of different locations around the world, and the impact of human activity on our world.

- Children develop fieldwork skills to pursue and investigate their own interests within a topic.

- Children retain learning and explicitly make connections between what they have previously learned and what they are currently learning.

- Children are able to articulate what they have learned in Geography and can describe significant periods, events and people from the past.

- Children remember more, know more and can do more.

Geography-progression-of-skills.pdf