Geography

Intent

The purpose of geography education at EWPA is to provide the children with a foundation for understanding the world and their place within it. Our geography curriculum is designed to develop children’s curiosity and knowledge about the physical and human characteristics of places and environments, as well as their interconnectedness over time. We ensure that geographical concepts, knowledge and skills are developed progressively and are revisited and built upon. Our topics have been carefully selected to explore physical and human features at a local, national and world level and as children progress through the school there is a clear development of topics from a local to international scale. Geography’s fundamental role lies in helping children to understand the world, its environments, places near and far, and the natural and human processes that affect them. We want all our children to learn skills and retain knowledge that will help them in the wider world and that will foster a love of learning and understanding about Geography.

How Geography is taught at EWPA

We teach three Geography units each year, alternating each half term with History. The topics follow the same pattern with a developing sophistication as the children grow. Each year will have one topic focusing on where we live in the world, one on physical features and the third topic focusses on another world location to help the children to develop their understanding of how things may be the same or different in other parts of the globe. Map work is taught explicitly and also woven into the other strands. Teachers make sure that there are regular opportunities for the children to refresh and revisit their previous learning through regular ‘forget-me-nots’. We have a very robust school ethos around retaining learning and all teachers practise strategies to support children with the retention of new knowledge and also to make links between their new and previous learning to deepen understanding. We use ‘Why This, Why Now?” at the beginning of each unit to help the children embed and contextualise their learning. Displays around the school also emphasise the children’s previous experiences. Geography teaching and learning is evaluated through lesson observations, pupil voice, and also forget-me-not retrieval and retention approaches which allow the children to continue to demonstrate their new and recall their prior learning.