Geography

Intention

At Ling Bob School, we believe that Geography can inspire children with a curiosity and fascination about the world in which they live. We want pupils to acquire a wide geographical vocabulary, a solid understanding of the Geography Programme of Study as identified in the National Curriculum and be able to use and develop their geographical mapping and field study skills and effectively apply these throughout their time in primary school. Through teaching geographical skills, our learners develop a range of investigation and problem solving skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and can be used to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We want our children to develop geographical skills; collecting and analysing data, using maps, globes, atlases and digital mapping to name and identify countries, continents and oceans as well as communicating information in a variety of ways. We want children to enjoy and love learning about geography by gaining knowledge and skills, not just through experiences in the classroom but also with the use of educational visits, visitors in school and fieldwork. The curriculum is flexible and adapted to support those children with SEND and those who have English as an addition language.

In Practice

At Ling Bob, our topic programme is carefully balanced and planned to be age appropriate across the years to ensure that there is full coverage of the National Curriculum and the Early Years Framework. The topics are planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and help the children to access new learning, this is recorded on progression maps for each key stage. Knowledge organisers are produced by subject leaders and teachers to show key learning outcomes, the key vocabulary, the sticky knowledge and skills children will gain. It is important to us that where appropriate, we make as many meaningful links as possible with other subject areas. 

Each class learns about their class country at the start of the academic year, this extends their knowledge and understanding beyond their locality. They then plan and complete a field study that focuses on an aspect of our local area. These field studies incorporate the expectations of the national curriculum so that we ensure coverage of the relevant locational and place knowledge over their time at Ling Bob. The following two terms are worked on as a rolling programme with children focusing on a specific geographical feature and then studying a contrasting part of the world that contains this feature. There is a balance between human and physical features.

Impact

When children leave Ling Bob School they will have a knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. They will understand subject specific vocabulary related to human and physical geography and they will have used geographical skills to observe and study their local area.