Simonstone St Peter's Church Of England Primary School

Geography at simonstone st. peters

subject leadership

Subject Leaders: J Freeman and J Booth

Link Governor: Rebecca Harrison

intent

We are Geographers!

At Simonstone St Peter’s we inspire in our ‘geographers’ a sense of curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, which will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

We have designed our distinctive geography curriculum with the intent that our children will become curious, well-equipped learners. Our geography curriculum provides the children with the fundamental role in helping them to understand the world, its environments and places both near and far away from them. We see the teaching of geography is vital for children to understand both our local area and the wider area, they are able to explore both the differences and similarities to the surrounding world. The children at Simonstone are able to gain high quality experiences to enhance, and then put into practise, their acquired geographical skills.

Our geography lessons are intended to offer a broad and rich geography curriculum to allow for coverage of the areas prescribed. Our ‘Geographers’ are given opportunities to develop map work reading skills, the chance to use photographs, sketches and diagrams to make observations, whilst getting out of classroom to carry out fieldwork and outdoor learning. At Simonstone St Peter's we are proud of our outdoor space, which has countless opportunities for the children to apply their geographical knowledge and skills. The pupils at Simonstone St Peter’s feel a great sense of enjoyment when learning outdoors; this discrete learning begins within the Early Years and continues all the way up to Year 6.

The curriculum lessons have an intention of providing a high quality, broad and progressive experience of the subject. Through each unit, our children will be engrossed and equipped 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. The children will also gain a greater insight and understanding of both physical and human processes and how these influence and impact the world, as they interact. The children will learn how to read a compass and use a map; they will use this within both lessons and fieldwork. Our intent is to make sure that children are given these vital experiences to explore the world around them to prepare them fully for their future life.

At Simonstone St Peter’s we aim high, with the expectation that all children will achieve in geography. Through adaptive teaching we are able to tailor the learning in geography to meet the needs of all our pupils; with our ‘challenge for all’ approach every learner meets the learning intentions. We are all geographers!

We deliver a curriculum that:

Inspires creative and interactive learning through excellent teaching practices that build upon prior geography learning and allow for repetition and progression of future learning and skills taught;
Embraces the community, in which it is situated, recognising local places of geographical interest such as Pendle Hill and The Lake District;
Is inclusive, develops self-confidence and identifies that all our children are unique and learn in different ways and therefore we should all be tolerant of each other;
Encourages and stimulates our children to be inquisitive and curious concerning the world around them that God created for us;
Allows every learner to become a geographer!

implementation

At Simonstone St Peter’s planning for geography is a process in which all teachers are involved to ensure that the school gives full coverage of (National Curriculum Geography and Geography in the Foundation stage). Geography teaching in our school is driven by key concepts, and is defined by excellence, enjoyment and achievement for all.

Through a well-structured lesson design, geography lessons at Simonstone St Peter’s incorporate a variety of teaching approaches, styles and focuses, such as:

A thematic approach is mapped out in order to allow for easier knowledge retention
Focus on encouraging our pupils to be ‘geographers’, with geographical enquiry driving the key concepts
Lessons always explain what we want the children to know, understand and be able to do with the taught geographical skills
Pupils are encouraged to ‘learn-to-learn’ through knowledge maps and other metacognitive approaches
Units of work are ‘career driven’ with children being guided towards the career opportunities that geography can lead them towards
Where appropriate, opportunities for children to visit sits of geographical interest locally and further afield are provided
Visitors are pre-planned for children to put their geographical enquiry and curiosity into practise
An emphasis is placed on examining varied primary sources and local geographical features
Adaptive teaching ensures that resources, activities and the level of scaffolding are varied and flexible, to ensure each pupil can learn effectively
The use of pre-planned questioning allows leads our ‘Challenge-for-All’ approach
Pupils are encouraged to ask questions to further their geographical enquiry and taught how to ask quality questions

impact

A Simonstone Geographer...

Flourishes during their time at Simonstone St Peter’s and gains a passion and understanding of the world and their place in it.

A Simonstone geographer is confident in recalling previous learning and how this has supported them in developing further knowledge. They use geographical vocabulary appropriately and demonstrate taught skills with an understanding of when they might use these in later life.

At Simonstone St Peter’s we use both summative and formative assessment to assess the impact of our geography curriculum. The below approaches to assessments are examples of what teachers and leaders use to determine the progress and attainment of Simonstone ‘Geographers’: