Geography
Our Vision
Through inspiring awe and wonder of our world, we will develop curious geographers, who love to ask questions about the diversity and connections in their local area and beyond.
Subject Leader: Clare O'Keefe
clare.okeefe@forestedge.org.uk
"The study of geography is about more than just memorizing places on a map. It's about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across the continents. And in the end, it's about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together."
- Barack Obama
Intent
At the Forest Edge Learning Federation, we aim to give our pupils a global perspective and international understanding. We want our children to become inquisitive and excited to build their skills and knowledge. Through our geography curriculum, we aim to develop children’s respect for the world around them and beyond which can be applied throughout their lives.
Implementation
Our project-based curriculum has been created to promote higher-level thinking skills in all our pupils and encourage them to make meaningful links both within and across subject disciplines. As a result, our geography curriculum has been developed to give children meaningful experiences of how geography is about real-life, which will allow them to form valuable connections between geography and other disciplines such as PSHE and Science. Geography will therefore not be taught in weekly sessions, and will instead be taught as a block immersed in the progression of a topic. This allows children to really ‘sink their teeth in’, exploring geography in a more holistic manner and tackling problems as they arise, giving a deeper understanding of the subject matter as it is put to practical use. Throughout pupils' time at our schools, they will revisit and build upon the skills they have learnt to ensure that they are embedded in their understanding. Alongside the taught Geography curriculum, geography will be explored incidentally throughout the school to enhance learning in other subjects and ensure that pupils retain the skills they have been previously taught.
Across our federation, we have a wide range of textbooks, such as atlases and interactive boards to access the internet as a class and there is a wide range of geographic material in the school library. People with an interest, or expertise, in a particular topic or area of geography could be invited into school to work with the children. These might be parents, grandparents, other family members, neighbours or representatives of the local community. Fieldwork visits are also built into our Explore term, where children collect data and study their local environments in a geographical way, practising disciplinary skills.
Within lessons, our approach to teaching places an emphasis on critical thinking and choice, particularly as children enter Key Stage Two. Across the federation, we adopt a teaching sequence based on a geographical enquiry, which encourages children to recognise a concept, before comparing to develop their understanding of similarities and differences. Next comes describing and linking to a source or the work of others. Children are encouraged to explain their ideas, and evaluate the choices they have made in relation to the purpose and audience of their outcome.
Impact
By the time they leave us, our children will have a good knowledge of the world, and their place in it, which they can continue to grow and explore in their Secondary School education. They will be able to use geographical vocabulary to identify and describe human and physical features in the world around them, and demonstrate geographical skills such as evaluation, creativity, problem solving and enquiry. Our children will aspire to discover more about the world, through reading, travel or the media and understand that different groups of people may have different perspectives on an issue, whilst beginning to form their own opinions.
Formative assessment is ongoing during lessons and project review times, and misconceptions are addressed by the class teacher. Subject leaders monitor the progress and attainment of children against the progression of skills during the Explore term and identify any areas for future development of the curriculum, CPD for staff or support for particular pupils.
British Values
At the Forest Edge Learning Federation, we understand the importance of educating our children to be safe, kind and responsible British Citizens. In order to explore democracy, our children have the opportunity to explore and discuss injustices and inequalities (perceived or real) and challenge and debate these through the exploration of geographical topics. We look at the rule of law by exploring the ways in which policy making at a local and global scale can influence both the physical and human landscape. Liberty is explored by having opportunities to learn about issues surrounding human rights. So that the importance of tolerance is understood well, there are many opportunities for children to develop understanding and respect for different cultures. As respect is one of our school values, it is something that is applied throughout but in geography we aim to develop our understanding and respect for different cultures.THe children also have opportunities to understand our responsibilities to conserve resources and play our part in sustainable development.
