Intent

At Rockcliffe, we want to nurture a love and interest in the world around them and for children to care about our planet.  We want children to understand the diversity of places in our Earth at a global, British and local scale in order to develop the skills required to be a successful geographer. Our curriculum has been designed and shaped to allow children to explore and develop an interest through studying a range of time periods.  We are surrounded by a wide range of geographical features and we want our children to recognise these places and be fascinated by the rich geography in our local area. We believe that by developing geographical skills, we are helping to make children successful learners, confident individuals and responsible individuals. 

Implementation

Geography is a central part of the Rockcliffe curriculum and is taught as part of lessons on a range of geographical scales throughout the year.  Geography is taught as part of a two-year curriculum across Key Stage 1 and 2. Our topics are centred on meeting requirements on the National Curriculum whilst also being shaped to be relevant and interesting to our children.  Lessons are planned to meet specific milestone targets in order to ensure both geographical knowledge and skills are attained.  Each lesson is linked to a skillset based on the skills necessary to be a geographer as part of our desire for children to be successful and skilled learners.

Across school, children learn to:

·         Investigate places: learning to use different geographical sources and to be able to identify countries, oceans and continents on maps.

·         Investigate patterns: learning to compare places for their features and geographical features at different scales.

·         Communicate geographically: learning to use geographical vocabulary to describe a location and to use a compass to communicate.

 These over-arching skills are broken down into appropriate milestones to ensure progression and consistency across school.

Children are given the opportunity to handle and observe different types of geographical sources, such as photos, maps, atlases and globes.  Throughout school, educational visits and workshops are planned when appropriate to enrich the experience of children and further their learning and interest of their geographical learning and apply fieldwork skills.  In particular, we make use of the Quarry and local coastline, which are first explored by children as part of Beach School in Eearly Years. 

Assessment

We ensure that children meet the attainment targets set out in the National Curriculum Programme of Study for Geography through our Milestones. We assess pupils’ progress towards these outcomes using an ongoing process of observation, listening and questioning, supplemented by recordings of conversations, written activities and quizzes. 

Impact

Our geography curriculum is age appropriate and is designed to show progression across the main geographical skills;iInvestigating places, investigating patterns, Communicating geographically. These main areas of the curriculum are broken down into milestones to be assessed across key stages at the end of the school year and our children achieve very well.

We have successfully achieved the Green Flag award with distinctions, as part of our drive to ensure children are environmentally minded and responsible for the planet.