Geography Intent.

At Cranham Primary we engage pupils through an ambitious and challenging Geography curriculum, which fosters pupils’ curiosity and sense of wonder about the beauty of the world around them and its people. It equips them with subject knowledge that enables them to understand the interaction between the physical and human processes which affect their lives, as well as the formation and use of landscapes and environments. We aim to prepare them for the increasingly urgent and complex geography issues and challenges that will arise during their lifetime, enabling them to thrive as global citizens. From adapting and mitigating the impact of climate change to predicting natural hazards such as earthquakes, to understanding the causes and effects of population migration around the world, our pupils will need to know about geography and to think like geographers.

We seek to encourage pupils to learn their geography through enquiries. Whilst knowing facts is important, we ensure that there is always a balance between knowledge acquisition, the development of important subject skills and the ability of children to think critically about what they are learning and why.

We aspire to instil in our pupils a desire to achieve the highest levels of success through providing them with the opportunities to build their substantive and disciplinary knowledge, master and apply subject skills and techniques and acquire the specialist language and technical terms to communicate their understanding effectively. Such high aspirations are clearly identifiable in the progressive and increasingly challenging objectives of each enquiry, which define what the pupils will know, understand and be able to do. Through our lessons, we share job opportunities that link to geography so that children have high aspirations and a purpose for learning.

Our curriculum is logical, relevant, broad and balanced in terms of the areas of subject content we have selected which reflect the guidance of the National Curriculum. For example, we have ensured that content includes an even proportion of physical and human investigations such as the effect of rivers on the landscape and the impact of the rise of megacities in the world. Due consideration has been given also to making certain that our geography curriculum maintains relevancy and topicality through including enquiries that engage pupils in studying issues such as climate change, flooding and trade.

The curriculum is sequenced to ensure that pupils can build on previous knowledge and understanding as they tackle more complex and demanding enquiries. The curriculum is progressively more challenging from EYFS through to Year 6 both in terms of the complexity of the subject knowledge we want our pupils to acquire and the disciplinary thinking skills we support them to master and apply to ensure they understand the significance of that knowledge. These anticipated outcomes in knowledge and understanding and skills acquisition are detailed in the planning of each enquiry unit.

In terms of the geographical techniques, we want our pupils to master as they progress through the school, our curriculum planning has been informed by our identification of the coverage required at Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. These are integrated into our termly enquiries to ensure adequate coverage through the curriculum. Our curriculum builds upon the provision for geography established in the Early Years Foundation Stage

Our curriculum is inclusive in terms of delivering the same curriculum to all our pupils irrespective of specific learning needs or disabilities and adapted where necessary through, for example, in class support, resourcing and alternative learning activities.