Geography 3Is

Throckley Primary School Geography – Intent, Implementation and Impact Intent At Throckley Primary School, we are committed to providing a purposeful and empowering curriculum that fully prepares learners for the next steps in their school career and opens the doors to the wider world. Geography surrounds us and forms parts of our everyday life and through our geography curriculum we hope to broaden our pupil’s horizons by helping them to understand the community they live in, their interaction with the environment and the relationships between nations. Within geography, we wish to provoke curiosity through the use of enquiry-based learning to help deepen children’s understanding of the world around them and provide them with transferable skills (through our O.W.Ls) that can be used across the curriculum and outside of school.

Underpinning the curriculum at Throckley Primary School are our curriculum drivers and our key concepts which are: Understanding our place in the world: Pupils will explore the relationship between place and identity through their units of study and begin to explore and compare different cultures and landscapes around the world. Investigating the human and physical features of different landscapes will help pupils to uncover how our world is ever-changing.

Aspiring to achieve: Once children begin to contemplate their place in the world and how their actions influence human and physical geographical aspects of the landscape, we aim to inspire children to achieve goals that will continue to make our lives sustainable and protect our planet. Through different skills taught and honed in their geography journey at Throckley Primary School, we hope they are able to use them to drive their achievements and set aspirations for their future.

Broadening horizons: Geography gives children the perfect opportunity to explore and fall in love with the beauty of planet Earth. By participating in fieldwork studies of the local area and places further afield, children can develop an appreciation for both human and physical attributes locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. One day, we hope our pupils follow in the famous footsteps of explorers to broaden their horizons and consider their influence beyond Throckley.

Climate: Climate and sustainability will be at the forefront of children’s thinking and ideas when reflecting on their place in the world and making connections across continents will develop children’s understanding of how they can influence the world’s future. Through this concept, children will be able to form judgements on choices that have already been made and determine their effect on the planet; this will help children to consider their choices in the future and how it could impact their environment. They will understand that the choices that they make in their lifetime can have a significant impact upon the geography of an area in both the short term and the long term.

The UK: We celebrate our local heritage and nurture children’s understanding of the communities of which they are part. Children will develop their sense of belonging to the UK and understanding of what that means. While applying their map reading skills to examine different parts of the UK, children will explore and appreciate the diversity of our country.

The wider world: Alongside developing their knowledge of the UK, pupils will begin to consider different communities, cultures, economies and characteristics of places in order to feel a sense of belonging to a particular place. They will understand how the location of a country can impact its human and physical geography. We aim to reveal to children the interdependence of the world and that no place is stand alone; it is influenced by something or someone.

Our geography curriculum is diligently sequenced to ensure that knowledge gained is cumulative and we value our bespoke spaced retrieval strategies as tools to support recall.

We understand the importance of building children’s vocabulary; we achieve this through the explicit teaching of new and ambitious words which is mapped across school and children use this in their independent work.

Implementation At Throckley Primary School we follow the National Curriculum for Geography while also taking into account the individual needs of learners across school. We place a high value on revisiting key knowledge and key concepts at Throckley. Our long-term plans indicate where class teachers should be revisiting prior knowledge with their children. Our knowledge organisers are a useful tool for class teachers, who are able to use these to guide their lessons and decide where they are revisiting and recalling prior learning. Therefore, at every stage of development, we are encouraging our children to reflect on their prior knowledge and understanding. As well as this, purposeful links are made across other subjects to ensure that the children’s knowledge is consolidated.

We value the power of authentic experience; learning is brought to life AND given relevance and meaning. We therefore carefully map trips, excursions and in-school events across school, supporting our key driver of ‘Broadening Horizons’ by ensuring a balance of coastal, urban and rural experiences.

What will I see if I visit a lesson in Throckley Primary School?

Creative, dynamic and passionate teachers: At Throckley Primary, we love learning. Class Teachers work collaboratively to bring children’s learning to life through planned experiences, which make learned content both memorable and engaging.

Clear, detailed explanations and modelling: We fully understand the importance of teaching being explicitly clear and tailored to individual need. The use of WAGOLLs and WABOLLs (What a good/bad one looks like) means that expectation is clear and children are scaffolded during independent practice. Children across school are taught to interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Support is layered; class teachers’ keen understanding of assessment will allow them to know each child as an individual and know when the time is right to remove a of support, guiding the child to independence, at a pace right for them.

Quality talk: Throughout school, geographical talk is vital in order for the children to develop their own ideas Talk ‘norms’ are embedded; with differentiated sentence stems displayed which support children in reciprocal talk. Children are taught talk moves including how to agree disagree, support, challenge and summarise the knowledge and opinions of their peers.

Skilful teacher questioning: A commitment to staff training in this area has led to a teaching team that is skilled in using questioning to support learners in reaching their potential. A mix of strategies allow class teachers to direct questions to individuals where necessary, or use a ‘no hands up approach’ to allow children to contribute freely. To stretch children to the

appropriate cognitive level, class teachers use prompts and cues to extend thinking. To develop this further, class teachers probe for reasoning and clarification, and, as pupils move further up the school, they are taught to give full, detailed and reasoned responses.

Spaced retrieval of key learning: At Throckley Primary School, we have developed a number of strategies, which support children in the recall, and retention of key knowledge. These are drawn upon during low-stakes assessments and prior to the teaching of new, yet related, content. Geographical areas of study are continuously revisited throughout school and the explicit links between topics are purposefully mapped in the long-term plan.

Clear learning intentions and tasks, which are appropriately challenging: We value the Blooms Taxonomy framework and this underpins learning sequences across the curriculum.

Building areas of study around Blooms allows us to build factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive knowledge, resulting in fuller understanding and greater depth. Our aim is for children to remember key knowledge, but also to develop a full understanding of it in order to then apply this in context, creating authentic outcomes, which draw on their learning experience over time.

Resilient, independent learners: We teach children metacognitive strategies, including how to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. Children are taught the value of their books, and working walls in supporting their learning and identifying what they know and what they still need to learn. Shared success criteria allow children to have ownership of their learning and support them to be able to monitor their progress. Shared and verbalised class teacher thinking also models the thinking process for children and this is evident across school.

Beautiful Work: At Throckley Primary, we celebrate beautiful work! Driven by our value of ‘pride’, we teach children the importance of well-presented, carefully planned work. Children are proud to display their outcomes; resilience, effort and progress are praised.

Impact Our children will develop a love for geography and a curiosity for the world around them. They will appreciate the importance of their role in society in order to create a sustainable world for future generations and the importance of preserving and celebrating diversity. We aspire for children to leave Throckley Primary School being able to debate and discuss geographical issues and to be able to reflect and form their own opinions on matters such as climate change and natural disasters. We measure our impact based on pupils’ confidence to ask and explore questions to further their own geographical knowledge and understanding. They will be inquisitive young learners and citizens who choose to understand global environmental issues and seek to make a personal difference in protecting and shaping the world we share. In this way, we prepare our learners fully for transition to secondary school when they leave Throckley Primary.

By the end of their primary education at Throckley Primary, our learners will have gained a rich body of geographical knowledge and a wide range of transferable skills, which they can apply to other subjects and contexts. They will have gained the geographical skillset and knowledge necessary in order to thrive at secondary school and beyond. We see this through talking with our children about their geography learning and what they can recall; we see this through the links our children make across topics and years groups when they talk speak about their understanding of a concept; we see this in our pupils’ wonderful work and we see this through the outstanding progress they make from their starting points with us

We utilise spaced retrieval and low stakes quizzing, using practical opportunities, quizzes, discussions and presentations in order to build a rounded picture of the learning that has taken place. This enables teachers to set appropriate, progressive targets and challenge children in their thinking and learning. We aspire for children to leave Throckley Primary School being able to debate and discuss geographical issues and to be able to reflect and form their own opinions on matters such as climate change and natural disasters. We measure our impact based on pupils’ confidence to ask and explore questions to further their own geographical knowledge and understanding. They will be inquisitive young learners and citizens who choose to understand global environmental issues and seek to make a personal difference in protecting and shaping the world we share. In this way, we prepare our learners fully for transition to secondary school when they leave Throckley Primary.