Intent

At Eling Infant School, our intent is to have a high quality geography curriculum that inspires our children to want to learn about the world and its people. We have shaped our curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child.

Geography has a clear learning journey across the whole school. The pupils will learn about our local area, appreciating its human and physical elements. We will then move our learning away from our community to communities near and far, allowing the children to appreciate parts of the wider world.

Geography is taught through topics, such as ‘Amazing Animals’, that will start with a hook or problem. This will allow the children to develop skills in recognising, describing, explaining, comparing and evaluating human and physical geographical elements. With learning sequenced carefully from nursery to year 2, skills and knowledge will be built upon to create independent geographers. Along with taught vocabulary being implemented at key points, children will have the language needed to be geographers.  

We aim to produce independent and evaluative thinkers who have empathy for how others live to develop an awareness, respect and curiosity for different cultures and societies and the physical world around them. Children should have the opportunity to ask questions, make links, allowing them to make sense of the world around them. They will have opportunities to work collaboratively and through the use of field work, trips and other experiences. Eling is a wonderful place that has a variety of human and physical features that make it very unique, such as a Tide Mill. Some of our children have not experienced this, so our job is to make the children experience the wonderful geography that Eling has to offer.

 

Implementation

At Eling Infant School the Geography curriculum is taught progressively throughout the school. Geography is taught over 3 half terms a year in KS1, but skills and knowledge are touched upon in the other 3 half terms through quizzes and games. During the 3 taught half terms, the children will attempt to answer an overarching enquiry question through a combination of approaches, starting with a hook to inspire the children. This will enable links to be developed that support the children’s own developing, local, national and global knowledge.

The children are encouraged to ask questions and develop their own lines of enquiry, using research skills to facilitate this. We approach learning creatively and understand that there is more than one way to achieve an objective or accomplish a task, in order to make lessons more engaging and accessible to all.

Skills and knowledge are taught progressively to ensure curriculum coverage and in order to develop the children’s key geographical skills and understanding throughout the school. High quality resources are used to support learning including globes, maps, photographs and atlases – as well as IT resources such as Google Earth in order to also develop children’s digital literacy.

Children are assessed throughout the half term, through activities, discussions or quizzes. This allows us to plan what each child needs to become successful geographers.

Impact

At Eling Infant School the impact will be seen through:

• Pupil conferencing – children will be happy, engaged and motivated to do well.
• Learning walls – key knowledge, skills and language to be placed on working walls. This will allow children to retain knowledge and skills more confidently and apply geographical skills more independently.
• Planning will allow children to gain knowledge and master skills, meeting the needs of all children.
• Topic Books – presentation will be of a high standard and children will be making at least expected progress from their various starting points.
• Data – will be in line with national / local levels.
• Half termly assessments will be carried out to identify next steps.

Reviewed by Subject Leader (September 2024)