Geography

At Marshwood CE Primary, through engaging and meaningful sequences of lessons, we aim to encourage children’s geographical understanding and their curiosity to explore the world that we live in and its people. Our units of work are built on core concepts which are revisited throughout the school. We nurture a curiosity about the Earth and support children to act as geographers whilst developing their geographical knowledge. As a result of high-quality teaching in geography, we equip children with geographical skills to develop their knowledge through studying places, people and natural and human environments. This deepens their understanding of the Earth’s human and physical forms and processes and nurtures a sense of responsibility to care for the Earth and its people.  

In geography, our children in Key Stage 1 learn about their local environments, the United Kingdom and are introduced to the world’s seven continents and five oceans. Children in Key Stage 2 are taught about different places in the United Kingdom, Europe and the Americas and how places relate to each other. Throughout the school, we provide opportunities for children to learn about geography on a local, national and global basis building their knowledge about different periods and encouraging them to draw on similarities, contrasts and key changes. Geographical skills, including those of mapwork, fieldwork and geographical enquiry, are developed progressively within and across different year groups. Children’s knowledge is built sequentially, with a focus on children remembering more and applying their learning to other areas.   

Geography is an investigative subject. Through our teaching, we provoke thought, questions, and encourage children to discover answers to their own questions through exploration and research to enable them to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it. Geography units are further enhanced by school visits, visiting experts and immersive experiences. Children work with primary sources of information where possible and learn to communicate their findings in increasingly sophisticated ways. 

For pupils with additional needs, there will be every opportunity to work towards the overall objectives of the year group. Pupils may be supported with their geographical learning through differentiated questioning, pre-teaching of key vocabulary, adapted work or additional time.  All pupils will be able to access the trips and visitors that enrich this subject, and high expectations will challenge all children to meet their personal targets.

Core Curriculum Concepts for Geography 

Our Marshwood curriculum forms the thread that weaves together all we do to live out our vision of nurture, grow, flourish and our values including respect, wisdom, love. Our rolling programme of study has been organised based on the subject programmes of study in the National Curriculum with these being carefully and purposefully mapped out to ensure a vertical progression of geographical skills, knowledge and vocabulary from EYFS to Year 6. Built into this are carefully planned horizontal links which connect learning in geography with different subject disciplines in meaningful ways. In addition to this, we have identified some core concepts within geography which children will revisit throughout their time at Marshwood in with increasing complexity: 

Geography within KS1 and KS2 

The curriculum stays coherent even if the order shifts because the key substantive knowledge is revisited multiple times in progressively richer contexts.