Mrs Hackney -Geography Lead

My name is Mrs Hackney and I am the Geography lead at St Peter’s Catholic Academy. Geography holds such an important place in my heart. I love to travel and explore the wonders of God’s beautiful creation. I loved Geography lessons when I was in school because I enjoyed learning about different countries and cultures. I hope you enjoy finding out how important Geography is to us at St Peter’s. I am proud of Geography in our school, we provide a curriculum that inspires the children to develop a passion for the world around us, as well as the impact we can have on this world. Geography is challenging, topical and fun. It is such an important area of the curriculum, with children learning about the world we live in, and the importance of looking after it. 

‘God’s World is in our Hands’- Whole School Geography Display 

Geography Intent:

At St Peter’s, Geography education should be fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfill the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a high quality curriculum; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills. We strive to inspire, challenge and engage children’s understanding about the world around them.

“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.’’ (The 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England) 

The aims of teaching geography in our school are:

• To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover more about the world
• To enable children to know about the location of the world’s continents, countries, cities, seas and oceans.
• To develop in children the skills of interpreting a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
• To help children understand how the human and physical features of a place shapes it location and can change over time.
• To provide opportunities to study mathematics across the curriculum through geography lessons
• To give children a greater awareness of the worlds climate and how we impact this.

Geography teaching at St Peter’s has a wide application to everyday life, teaching the children to enjoy learning about the world and to have a better understanding of how people live in different locations.

Implementation:

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a half termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At St Peter’s, we ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.

The Geography curriculum at St Peter’s is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document. Teachers can use this document to plan their geography lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

When teaching geography the teachers should follow the children’s interests to ensure their learning is engaging, broad and balanced.

Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement.

Geography provides excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through the investigations, analyzing sources and writing extending pieces. Children showing extensive aptitude in geography will be placed on our schools gifted and talented register.  These children will be selected for appropriate enrichment opportunities throughout the year.

At St Peter’s we provide a variety of opportunities for geography learning inside and outside the classroom.  Children also have many opportunities to experience geography on educational visits. The children will also explore the local area including orienteering within the school grounds and conducting studies in the local area.

Impact:

Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and inquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.

Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and discreet vocabulary progression also form part of the units of work. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinized and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.

Geography in our classrooms…

What have we been doing in school?

Yr 4 have been using fieldwork to observe and record the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods including sketch maps, plans and graphs and digital technologies. They have been building on knowledge and understanding of how to use the eight points of a compass, four-figure grid references, symbols and keys to communicate knowledge.

        

They even created a human eight point compass!

 

Yr 3 learning about volcanoes and extending this with a home project to apply the knowledge they had learnt

    

Year 5’s trip to Castleton May 23: Focusing on Erosion. 

Year 4: River Study, May 23 

Year 1: The UK, messy maps! March 23

 

Reception, Signs of Spring Walk March 2023 

Year 2, Landscape Explorers, FLASH! March 23 

Year 5: Kensuke’s Kingdom Survival Day March 23

Year 4: Map Skills in Mow Cop March 23

Year 3, Mountains Topic: The Roaches

 

January 2023:

The children in Year 1 have been focusing on the weather and different seasons. Last week in our Geography lesson, they became weather reporters for the afternoon! You can watch the children presenting on the link below. 

https://clipchamp.com/watch/5sptQY6MQox

Autumn Term 2 2022:

September 2022:

Year 1 have been exploring their Local Area, we have made our own ‘ariel view, messy maps!’.

We have also been on a Local Area Walk, using cameras in the field to help us with our future learning.