Intent

Our vision is to develop children who have a natural curiosity about the world around them. Our pupils are encourage to ask questions about the world around them in order to help them develop a strong understanding of the world they live in and their place in it. We develop this understanding through themes which include locational knowledge and place knowledge, physical and human geography, local knowledge and worldwide knowledge.

Our children begin by learning simple geographical vocabulary as mapped out on our progression grids and in recognising key geographical characteristics and patterns. This helps to continue developing children’s understanding of where they live and go to school and allows them to explain and describe this using the learnt geographical vocabulary. They also start to compare their local surroundings to contrasting international locations. This learning is systematically built upon throughout key stage 1 and 2 which allows our children to review previous knowledge and develop it further.

Here at Collis we aim to encourage the children’s geographical understanding through a wide variety of exciting topics and trips. We are lucky enough to live in a geographically rich area with a multitude of opportunities on our doorstep. In addition we benefit from a beautiful natural area within our own school grounds. We build on this by providing an array of trips to local landmarks, parks and the River Thames in addition to further afield locations culminating in the year 6 residential trip to Osmington Bay, Weymouth.

We are committed to all pupils leaving our school, knowing more and remembering more by having a strong emphasis on prior learning. Collis children will understand and celebrate their place in the world. Year 6 children will be ready to start their secondary education as learners who are inquisitive about the world around them, able to ask geographically sound questions and passionate about exploring and protecting the planet they live on.

A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people.... 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

National Curriculum 2013

Implementation

At Collis, each lesson is planned to engage all children by use of exciting resources and successful questioning. We use our well thought out progression grid to plan and implement each lesson in order to create clear and cohesive arc of lessons. Each year group aims to equip children with essential knowledge about the world through a use of resources including atlases, maps, compasses and videos. Children are given ample time in lessons to discuss new topics and explore their own ideas about each topic. In key stage 2 they have the opportunity to further their own research using Chrome books in addition to the other Geography specific resources.

We aim to use as many first hand experiences as possible to support children’s learning and understanding of the world. As previously mentioned, we are very lucky to live in a geographically rich area which allows us to offer a variety of trips throughout the children’s time at Collis, starting with Bocketts’ Farm in Reception and including a river studies trip on the Thames in Year 5 where children are able to explore the environmental impacts of plastic pollution.

Impact

• Children are able to communicate their skills and knowledge of geographical information in a variety of ways.
• Children are able to use relevant vocabulary and encouraged to do so often, with a focus on Tier 2 vocabulary.
• Children enjoy their topic and are eager to learn more about the world around them through visits and further reading.
• Children are able to develop independence by using the high-quality resources to research topics and find their own answers.

If you were to walk into Geography lessons at Collis, you will see:

• Children using a wide range of resources, including maps, atlases and globes, to develop their understanding of place and to help find answers to key questions
• Children using geographical vocabulary to discuss and express their knowledge.
• Children are able to describe, to an age appropriate level, their place in the world geographically and how they can look after the world around them.
• Regular opportunities through lesson starters, plenaries, early morning work and assemblies to revisit previous lesson objectives within a unit as well as those from earlier topics.
• Interested and engaged children who are confident to talk about their learning.

An example of skill progression within our Geography curriculum (Map skills):

Pupil Voice

Reception – I enjoyed learning about my family and home.

Year 1 - I have really enjoyed learning about our school, Teddington, and the United Kingdom. I like singing the United Kingdom song, walking around our school, and drawing the different places in our school.

Year 3 - We learnt about Whitby and that it is a beach town. It’s different to Teddington because it’s on the beach and Teddington is an hour in the car to the beach.

Year 4 – I am enjoying our geography lessons because I like learning about different places in Europe, understanding their cultures and languages, and exploring their monuments.

Year 5 – I enjoyed going to Teddington lock. We investigated water temperature, had a go at filtering water and checked the PH levels

Year 6 - I love to learn about where places are in the world and see them on different maps and globes.

2023-2024 Successes:

• Clearly identified and mapped geographical skills (procedural knowledge) from Early Years up to Year 6 (using the Geographical Association) these have been added to the whole school progression grid and embedded within our curriculum.
• As part of those skills, fieldwork was been a focus. We’ve thought carefully about opportunities in our curriculum and purposely planned for these. We ordered specific equipment to enable classes to participate in fieldwork effectively. E.g. weather station in the meadow, thermometers in the Year 1 outside area.
• Progression in the use of Geographical vocabulary is planned.
• Medium term planning now includes prior, current and future sticky knowledge to help teachers understand why this, why now, what next?
• The National Curriculum is the starting point for identifying concepts but we now also use key and organising concepts (from the Geographical Association) to help design our curriculum to ensure the content is geographical in nature.
• Refined our curriculum to consider developing a ‘sense of place’ where places are revisited so children can develop a more nuanced understanding, avoiding single perspectives and misconceptions from developing.
• Subject specific CPD including Digi-maps, developing a sense of place, geographical concepts and teaching fieldwork.

Priorities for 2024-25:

• Continue to build on and refine our approach to fieldwork and its components: to collect, present and analyse data, and how to reach and evaluate conclusions based on the data.
• Support non-specialists with their pedagogy - especially their explanations of complex geographical ideas and their ability to identify misconceptions through gallery lessons, co-planning and peer observations.