Social Sciences: Geography

Intent for Geography

We want our children to be genuinely curious about the world and to feel at home in it — to wonder where places are, why they are as they are, and how people and the environment shape one another.

We teach geography the way scientists work, because that curiosity is at the heart of our vision. Following the aims of the national curriculum, our children observe, measure, record and explain: they build a picture of the world and the places in it, they investigate why those places look and work as they do, and they learn how natural features and human activity change one another over time.

Implementation

EYFS Implementation

In Reception, geography is taught through the Understanding the World area of the Early Years Foundation Stage, across both People, Culture and Communities and The Natural World. 

Children explore and describe their immediate environment — the classroom, the school grounds, the streets and buildings they pass on the way in — drawing on observation, discussion, stories, non-fiction and simple maps. 

They begin to notice similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries, and between the natural world around them and contrasting environments they meet in books and photographs. 

Through outdoor learning, seasonal change, weather observation and caring for living things, children start to understand some important processes and changes in the natural world. 

Adults introduce the early vocabulary of place and direction, giving children the language they will need for map work in Key Stage 1.

KS1 Implementation

In Key Stage 1, pupils build their locational knowledge by naming and locating the world's seven continents and five oceans, and the four countries, capital cities and surrounding seas of the United Kingdom. 

They develop place knowledge by comparing the human and physical geography of a small area of the United Kingdom with a small area in a contrasting non-European country, looking closely at how people live in each. 

They identify seasonal and daily weather patterns in the UK and locate hot and cold areas of the world in relation to the Equator and the North and South Poles, using and applying basic geographical vocabulary for physical features such as coast, river, valley and vegetation, and human features such as city, farm, port and shop. 

Skills are taught throughout: pupils use world maps, atlases and globes, follow simple compass directions and directional language, interpret aerial photographs and plan perspectives, and devise their own simple maps with basic symbols and a key. Fieldwork begins here, with pupils observing and recording the geography of their own school, its grounds and the surrounding streets.

KS2 Implementation

In Key Stage 2, pupils locate the world's countries using maps, concentrating on Europe including Russia, and on North and South America, and examining environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries and major cities. 

They name and locate counties, cities and geographical regions of the United Kingdom, identify its key topographical features and land-use patterns, and consider how some of these have changed over time. They learn the position and significance of latitude and longitude, the Equator, the hemispheres, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, the Prime Meridian and time zones. 

Place knowledge is developed through the study of a region of the United Kingdom, a region in a European country and a region within North or South America. 

In physical geography, pupils describe and explain climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers and the water cycle, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes; in human geography, they study settlement and land use, economic activity and trade links, and the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water. 

Skills and fieldwork develop in precision: pupils use atlases, globes and digital mapping, work with the eight points of the compass and with four and six-figure grid references, symbols and keys on Ordnance Survey maps, and undertake fieldwork in which they observe, measure, record and present

Impact for Geography

Our children become geographers. They can read a map, gather and make sense of information, go and look at a place for themselves, and use what they find as evidence to explain the world around them.

whole school curriculum maps social sciences 2 .pdf