“The study of geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together. “ - Barrack Obama. 

Lead Geographer: Rachel Chevassut

Intent:

At Christchurch Infants we believe that children should be inspired and excited to learn about the world that they live in, the people in it and how it all connects in different processes. We see that Geography is an essential aspect of the curriculum, that children can see is relevant to them and where they can realise their importance in their immediate surroundings, their part in the world and their ability to make changes now and in the future. As with CCI’s  History Intent, we aim to ’equip pupils with the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life’ (School inspection handbook 2019, updated 2021) by providing our pupils with a varied, fascinating and relevant range of experiences and challenges to allow pupils to develop these essential skills, knowledge and understanding as outline by the National Curriculum.

We aim to ensure that every child sees themselves as a geographer (rather than just knowing that they are learning geography), being fascinated in learning about the world around them, their own locality, the differences in people, resources and features of different environments and places, and to start to understand how processes in the world work.

The cross-curricular enquiry approach at CCI means that we hope children can learn about the world around them in exciting, meaningful and relevant ways, developing the skills, knowledge and understanding they need through varied and rich experiences. This should enable children to links across subjects in what they learn and allow them to  reflect on what they learn, how it is meaningful to their lives now and in the future, and instil even more curiosity and desire to learn more about the world around them and their part in it.

Implementation:

Being a geographer’ is integrated into our curriculum through Curious-city - An enquiry-led, local learning approach to the National Curriculum 2014. 

The EYFS curriculum at CCI allows opportunities for the children to meet the Early Learning Goals for  Understanding the World in these areas:

• Past and present
• People, culture and communities
• The natural world

The enquiry led approach for KS1 ensures children develop knowledge and skills as outlined by the National curriculum. This encompasses developing contextual locational and place knowledge, understanding about different physical and human geographical process and features, and developing geographical skills including data collection, interpreting different sources of geographical information and be able to communicate information in a variety of ways.

In KS1,  children will learn about

• Locational knowledge
• Place knowledge
• Human and physical geography
• Geographical skills and fieldwork.

(The National Curriculum, 2014 specifies and expands on these overall areas, the objectives of which are all included in our cross curricular enquiries).

As with the other foundation subjects, the cross-curricular enquiry approach will ensure that children experience enquiries where being a geographer is either the lead state-of-being or supporting state-of-being. The enquiry sequences go through the following steps: Engage, Immerse (know of), Immerse (know how), Practise (know of), Practise (know how) and Challenge.

Children will experiences an exciting and broad range of learning opportunities including (where possible) hands on experiences, educational visits, local outings, outdoor learning and opportunities to explore a variety of geographical resources. The enquiry-led approach will follow sequences of experiences, building on knowledge and understanding and making links across the curriculum. It will lead to the children being able to answer the enquiry question they are focusing on, in the ‘challenge’ part of the sequence, proving their understanding using the knowledge and skills they have developed.

Where does 'Being a Geographer' feature in our enquiries?

Impact:

After the implementation of this curriculum, children at Christchurch Infants will be equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need as geographers at this stage. They will have a thorough understanding of their own locality where they live and go to school and will be able to make meaningful links to knowledge they have learnt about further away. They will be ready as geographers to move onto deepening and extending their learning as they go into KS2 and will be starting to see how relevant geography is in their wider life outside school, especially in current times of energy, fuel and waste challenges.

Children will be more confident in the geographical knowledge and skills that they  have developed at CCI and will be able to reflect on it and apply it more meaningfully to their lives. Children will be seen to be inspired and driven to know more and find out what differences they can make to our world in positive ways.

The impact of the curriculum will be assessed through:

• Work in challenge books
• Work in enquiry floor books.
• Photographs and videos of children’s work
• Pupil conferencing
• Thorough planning that has clear WALT’s and skills being taught
• Assessment data recorded by class teachers
• Subject knowledge quizzes

We use teacher judgement to assess at the end of each enquiry how well a child has mastered the objectives that have been covered. This information is recorded on Arbor three times a year. This allows for monitoring subject coverage, find and fill gaps and plan next steps. Feedback is sent to parents through reports three times per year.