Impact

At Stocksbridge Junior School, our pupils develop, extend and build upon their Geography learning throughout Key Stage 2. Medium Term plans outline the end points for each Geography enquiry which detail the substantive knowledge that pupils should have acquired during that enquiry. There are planned opportunities within each Geography lesson to revisit and retrieve knowledge to ensure that this knowledge is becoming ‘sticky’ and is becoming embedded in pupils’ long-term memory. With a strong emphasis in the Geography planning on the teaching of vocabulary, there are planned opportunities within each enquiry to allow pupils to ‘Write like a Geographer’. This is an effective way for teachers to assess the impact of how well pupils have understood key concepts and vocabulary and how well they can apply this to an independent piece of writing.

At the end of an enquiry, summative assessment papers are completed by pupils. Questions will link explicitly to the substantive knowledge that pupils will have acquired and results from these assessments will inform teachers’ planning, will help to address misconceptions and will highlight any knowledge that has not yet become ‘sticky’.

A range of formative assessment strategies are used within Geography lessons to effectively track pupils’ learning and to highlight any intervention that may need to happen at the point of learning. Strategies include:

• Word Ban cards
• Follow Me cards
• Cloze Procedure activities
• Kahoot quizzes
• Super six

To assess the impact of Geography skills and knowledge, we use a range of strategies including:

• Book Looks
• Pupil voice interviews
• Lesson observations
• Staff feedback questionnaires

The National Curriculum for Geography

Purpose of study

A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the framework and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

Aims

The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of 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
• are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
  • collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
  • interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  • communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length

Subject content: Key stage 2

Pupils should extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and Europe, North and South America. This will include the location and characteristics of a range of the world’s most significant human and physical features. They should develop their use of geographical knowledge, understanding and skills to enhance their locational and place knowledge.

Pupils should be taught to:

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
• 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
• 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 in 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

Geographical skills and fieldwork

• use maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate countries and describe features studied
• use the 8 points of a compass, 4- and 6-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
• 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