Geography

Geography Intent Statement

At Woodlands we are a multicultural school celebrating children from a diverse range of backgrounds.  With this in mind, the quality of education in Geography at Woodlands is crucial to developing responsible global citizens who develop interactions with the human and physical aspects within Geography.  

It is the aim of our inclusive Geography curriculum to ensure our children receive high quality provision that is engaging, interactive and cross curricular and most importantly develops a passion for the subject. We do this via visiting local places as well as a variety of Educational visits. This provides opportunities for the children to develop their fieldwork skills as well as gain real world experiences. 

A creative Geography curriculum allows the children to: 

• Develop their spatial awareness by exploring their immediate environment as well as the extended local area. 

• Question geographical patterns and challenge phenomena. 

• Develop reasoning within Geography drawing upon the skills they have learnt.

• Compare a range of geographical ideas using human and physical features. 

• Develop problem solving skills to allow the children to think creatively and aspire to find solutions to world problems.

• Develop a passion for Geography that builds up a curiosity of their world and inspires our children to have the highest expectations of themselves as responsible citizens.

Geography implementation

At Woodlands, a cross-curricular ‘themed’ approach to planning is used across all subjects- with clear rationales and contextualised learning to support the children in their lessons.

Teaching in a cross-curricular approach allows the children to re-visit key skills across the curriculum, with high expectations being set in all subjects. Teachers carefully plan the lessons to ensure there is progression across the topic which builds on skills and subject knowledge taught in previous years. They ensure that a greater depth of understanding is taught in lessons and that lessons are tailored to meet the needs of all children and are inclusive. Making ‘links’ (where appropriate) within geography and across the curriculum enables the children to remember what they have learnt and build a solid foundation for future topics.

Reading is used continuously within geography to discover and explore, developing vocabulary and speech and language at all times

At the beginning of each unit – each class has a ‘launch’ which act as a hook for the children and invigorate the children’s curiosity about what is to come. These take many different forms, examples are - going on trips, having visitors into school, planning a range of activities to have a fully immersive day in school.

Geography is taught each term and is embedded in the theme that is being taught. Teachers identify the key subject knowledge and skills that the children need to become successful in geography when they are planning and use our assessment descriptors to support them- this ensures that the quality of education the children receive is at least good, progressive, it sets high expectations and is aspirational for all children.

Our assessment sheets split geography into: locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography & geographical skills and fieldwork. These key skills are taught progressively throughout the school, in every geography topic, which allows the children to build knowledge and skills over time and to get a depth of understanding across the subject. After each unit the teachers assess the skills and subject knowledge that has been taught and use this to support in their planning.

Learning outside the curriculum is embedded across the curriculum, with opportunities to practise their geographical fieldwork skills in and around the local area.