- Geography at Hillsborough Primary School - Intent, Implementation and Impact

Intent

To deliver a curriculum which:

• Inspires a curiosity and fascination about the world, its people and the communities to which they belong.
• Places a particular emphasis on environmental learning and developing climate literacy, empowering students to consider the impact of human actions on the planet and developing the belief that their actions can make a difference.
• Emphasises an enquiry-based approach, thereby equipping children with the skills they need to become geographers that are able to explore complex interactions between humans and the world in which we live.

Implementation

Teaching and Learning, Content and Sequence

• Children will study two geography units each year which have been carefully sequenced to develop children’s learning of geographical skills and concepts.
• An enquiry-based approach will be used whereby each unit poses a question that the children will research around in order to answer.
• Each individual lesson will make use of high-quality resources to answer a specific question that will help address the broader enquiry.
• Each unit will include at least two lessons that pose environmental questions.
• A dialogic approach will facilitate discussion and exploration of a wide-range of resources.
• Up-to-date events, such as current environmental issues and global climate news, will be integrated into lessons to make learning relevant and encourage pupils to connect classroom knowledge with the world outside school.
• The geography progression document plots out the progression of skills and knowledge in each area of geography to ensure progression across the school from EYFS to Y6.
• Outdoor learning will play a key role in the curriculum, with regular field trips and exploration of local environments providing practical opportunities for students to observe, collect data, and apply their skills first hand.
• Central to the emphasis on outdoor learning and geographic-enquiry will be teaching around maps and the application of map-skills.
• Children will produce a final piece of work that allows them to present their learning and address the overarching enquiry question.

Leadership, Assessment and Feedback

• Geography is led by a class-based subject leader.
• Assessment of geography is based on teacher assessment. 
• Each unit of work has a pre-unit and post-unit quiz: the pre-unit quiz is based on previous knowledge that is linked to the upcoming unit.  The results of this will inform any gap-filling sessions and memory maps to be used at the start of each lesson; the post-unit quiz will assess children’s knowledge of the unit based on the end-of-unit outcomes.  The results of these assessments over the year will inform the data entered onto the school’s tracker.

Impact

• Children enjoy geography and develop a curiosity about the world.
• All children will be able to answer the enquiries they have researched during the unit, and will have developed the knowledge and skills that have been defined in the end-points for each unit.
• Children will develop a strong awareness of environmental issues.
• As children progress through school, they will become more independent in their ability to select and use resources to address geographic enquiries.
• As children progress through school, they will show increasing familiarity with a range of maps, and with their ability to use maps in context.
• Children understand the relevance and importance of their learning. 
• The school is using a curriculum which shows progression through the year groups
• The progression document and schemes of work have been shared with staff and are being used by everyone
• Work is celebrated in whole school displays