We will do this by:
- Ensuring that the children are offered a high-quality geography education which inspires in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
- Ensuring that the teaching of geography is of a high standard by monitoring work which has been produced as well as sharing great practice with the whole school community.
- Enabling the children to engage in a variety of methods and medium in which to explore the physical and human aspects of geography and topography.
- Ensure that all geography lessons are suitably prepared and resourced and children have the opportunity to record, communicate or write at varying length, for different purposes and audiences using the variety of geographical terms, vocabulary and outcomes that they have learned.
In teaching Geography at Grove Road, we aim to offer opportunities to children to:
- develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide geographical context for understanding the actions for processes.
- understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time.
- Build competency in the geographical skills of collecting, analysing and communicating with arrange of data gathered through fieldwork experiences
- Build competency in interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and GIS (geographical Information Systems).
Teaching & Learning
At Grove Road, we recognise that as a multi-cultural community, children come from all over the globe and thus can offer knowledge and understanding of their own birth countries and places lived. This in turn may enable some of the children to make faster progress than others when comparing and contrasting different locations and geographical characteristics. It is for this reason that we have ensured that some of these birth countries of our children are included when studying different localities, comparing and contrasting physical and human characteristics and using geographical skills and field work.
Our key teaching objectives are to:
- Wherever appropriate it should be linked to other areas of the curriculum and become part of the half-termly topic or theme.
- Develop children’s confidence when exploring the world, the United Kingdom, and their own locality.
- Build confidence in using geographical skills including first-hand observation, using vocabulary relating to physical and human geography and locational awareness.
- Ensure opportunities to re-visit and reinforce skills and knowledge throughout the year and build on previous knowledge and understanding from earlier year groups.
- Locational Knowledge – Four countries of the UK, surrounding seas and their capital cities.
- The world’s 7 continents and the five oceans.
- Place Knowledge – understand geographical similarities and differences of physical and human geography of a small place in the UK with a small area of a non-European country e.g. Scottish Islands.
- Human and Physical Geography – seasonal and daily weather patterns in the UK and the location of hot and cold areas of the world in relation to the equator and North and South poles.
- use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to
key physical features, including:
- beach, cliff, coast, forest, hill, mountain, sea, ocean, river, soil, valley, vegetation, season and weather
- key human features, including: city, town, village, factory, farm, house, office, port, harbour and shop
- Geographical skills and fieldwork – use world
maps, atlases and globes to identify the United Kingdom and its countries, as
well as the countries, continents and oceans studied at this key stage
- use simple compass directions (North, South, East and West) and locational and directional language [for example, near and far; left and right], to describe the location of features and routes on a map Geography – key stages 1 and 2 3
- use aerial photographs and plan perspectives to recognise landmarks and basic human and physical features; devise a simple map; and use and construct basic symbols in a key
- use simple fieldwork and observational skills to study the geography of their school and its grounds and the key human and physical features of its surrounding environment.
The children in KS2 will be taught:
- Locational knowledge – locate the world’s countries, using maps to focus on Europe (including the location of Russia) and North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries, and major cities
- Locational Knowledge – name and locate counties and cities of the United Kingdom, geographical regions and their identifying human and physical characteristics, key topographical features (including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers), and land-use patterns; and understand how some of these aspects have changed over time
- Locational Knowledge – identify the position and significance of latitude, longitude, Equator, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Arctic and Antarctic Circle, the Prime/Greenwich Meridian and time zones (including day and night)
- Place knowledge – understand geographical similarities and differences through the study of human and physical geography of a region of the United Kingdom, a region in a European country, and a region within North or South America
- Human and
physical geography – describe and understand key aspects of:
- physical geography, including: climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the water cycle
- human geography, including: types of settlement and land use, economic activity including trade links, and the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water Geography – key stages 1 and 2 4 Geographical skills and fieldwork
- Geographical skills and field work – use maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate countries and describe features studied
- Geographical skills and field work – use the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and key (including the use of Ordnance Survey maps) to build their knowledge of the United Kingdom and the wider world
- Geographical skills and field work – use fieldwork to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods, including sketch maps, plans and graphs, and digital technologies.