Geography
Geography intent
The main purpose of our Geography curriculum is to instil a sense of awe and wonder about the world around us. We aim to develop a sense of curiosity and fascination within all of our children, to encourage them to think for themselves, to take initiative, to ask questions and investigate our world.
At our school we want to instil a lifelong love of Geography, therefore we try to use real places, real experiences and real issues to make Geography come alive. We compare our local area to other places the children have visited and compare Kingsbury to Rotherwick, our Year 5 residential trip. We use our school locality, and Fryent Country Park in particular, to see how land is used and to witness, first-hand, how our environment changes with each season. We also use the tube to go into London whenever we can, to recognise the importance of the city we call home.
By encouraging our children to think geographically we hope to enrich their social, moral, and cultural development. We are committed to developing ‘Geographers for Life’ and instilling them with investigative and problem-solving skills for use both inside the classroom and beyond. With these skills we hope to develop our children into educated citizens who can make a valuable change to our world.
A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
At St Robert Southwell we will equip our pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes
Implementation
We try to keep up to date with the world around us with our News Board, which is changed weekly and encourage our children to watch Newsround daily. Children also have the opportunity to do a Geography Quiz, which is ongoing and have the opportunity to get a ‘coveted’ Geography badge.
The aims of teaching geography in our school are:
- To inspire our children’s curiosity to discover more about the world.
- To enable children to know about the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans.
- To help children understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes it location and can change over time.
To develop in children, the skills of interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
Impact
We know our geography curriculum is enjoyed by our children. This is clearly evident by witnessing their curiosity and willingness to take part in geography based activities outside the normal classroom environment. Children are often ‘caught’ discussing climate change, global warming, immigration and other topics in front of the News board. Also, our students are always happy to compete in a mastermind type quiz between two classes studying the same topic. This has encouraged them to work independently and competitively.
Geography is the focused topic for the summer term and is studied in greater depth during this time.