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 footsteps of famous geographers to broaden their horizons and consider their influence beyond Throckley.
Place and space – We aim to provide children with the skills they will need to independently navigate new places and spaces. Children will learn how to use maps, atlases and globes to give a sense of place and location when compared to other places. They will learn how to use grid references and keys to understand what is being shown and create maps and routes for journeys they may take.
Scale and connection – Our word is interconnected and 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. Children will explore how small changes in one location can have an impact on both their local area and places further afield. They will use a range of sources to help them appreciate how the world and individual country’s economies are interconnected through trade and tourism. By zooming in and out on locations and comparing sizes, distances and time taken to travel there, children will gain an understanding of how close or faraway places are as well as their size.
Physical and human geography – Children will learn how to collect, analyse and communicate a range of geographical sources and data gathered through experiences of fieldwork. They will interpret a range of sources and communicate it in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical, quantitative skills and writing at length. They will use this to make comparisons between the human and physical geography features of different locations and understand how these change over time.
Environment and sustainability – This will be at the forefront of children’s thinking and ideas when reflecting on their place in the world and making connections both at home and across continents will develop children’s understanding of how they can influence the world’s future. Through this concept, children will examine the cause and effect of changing human and physical geography. They will consider their ethical consumer habits and the choices made by themselves and those in power about sustainability and the impact this has upon the environment. 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 they can have a significant impact upon the geography of an area in both the short term and the long term.
Culture and diversity – Respect for ethnicity and diversity through knowing more about other cultures and people is an essential part of the geography curriculum at Throckley Primary School. Children will appreciate that there is more than one way of living – understanding the culture and ‘the way people do things around here’. They will use their knowledge of culture and diversity to explore regional inequality and how parts of a location may by thriving while others are relatively poor.
Our geography curriculum will inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching will equip pupils with diverse 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. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time. Our curriculum is diligently sequenced to ensure that knowledge gained is cumulative and we value our bespoke spaced retrieval strategies and low stakes cumulative quizzing 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 from nursery to Year 6. Etymology and morphology is drawn upon to give pupils a broader understanding and children use the vocabulary in their independent work.
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?
Evidence-informed lesson routines
Lesson routines at Throckley Primary School support staff in the implementation of Rosenshine’s principles of instruction. They ensure that what we know and understand about how best pupils learn, is then reflected in how we teach. The ‘teach – task – teach – task’ model allows ample time for misconceptions to be addressed. Lesson time is given to connecting to previous (and relevant) taught content; concise explanation; clear examples; time for practice before application; and challenge for all.
Credit: Alex Bedford ‘Pupil Book Study Handbook’
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 relebant models and worked examples 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. Class Teachers are adept at questioning – a range of techniques are used to ensure that class teachers are able to confidently and accurately assess children’s knowledge and understanding. 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.
Hard thinking: We plan tasks carefully to ensure children have space to practice. Lowstakes ‘attempt’ tasks allow misconceptions to be addressed before children commit to working in books. We also value hard thinking and plan tasks which challenge all learners to think deeply; this type of active learning supports working memory and helps children to embed key knowledge.
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.