Geography
At St Barnabas, we want our children to be fascinated about the world and the people in it. Their curiosity should last the rest of their lives. Our children should know about the diversity of places, people and human and natural environments and how geography has played important roles in the evolution of people and places. The main purpose of geography is to see and understand patterns in our world and our young geographers are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as their place in it. They should also understand human and physical processes of the planet.
Geographical concepts
Key concepts run throughout all the geography units we teach.
These include; Physical Features, Human Features, Location, Environment, Settlements, Mapping, Comparison and Climate.
Map skills
Children develop their ability to read and interpret maps as well as create their own.
Visiting places
We visit places locally, nationally and globally both physically and virtually in order to gain an understanding of what they are like now and how they have developed or changed over time.
Implementation
Our Geography curriculum is based on different principles including retrieval of previously learned content and also the interleaving of units. Our curriculum uses key substantive knowledge concepts as threads that run through our curriculum model to ensure that our children develop a deeper understanding of these concepts. These are revisited in our ‘knowledge rich’ units of work as we recognise that if we attempt to teach geographical topics, places, themes and issues in their entirety we restrict opportunities for pupils to retain knowledge and master critical thinking skills.
Knowledge schemas
A knowledge schema is created at the start of each unit, which is then made available for children to use at any point in their lessons. This is a way to support memory retention, building knowledge and vocabulary through retrieval practise strategies which are planned in to every lesson. The knowledge schemas have been designed into strands that link the key History concepts to the current unit content, therefore building abstract mental structures (schema) and showing the links to other units of study to support easier retrieval of information in the future. The essential knowledge that we as a school have chosen to develop as a priority for our children can be found on the medium term plans. Alongside the development of dual coded knowledge schemas and retrieval practice strategies, we ensure that our curriculum provides opportunities to build upon and revisit previous learning.
Impact
Children in the St Barnabas Multi Academy Trust will know and remember more as they progress through the Geography curriculum. We recognise that learning is a change to long term memory and that it is difficult to see the impact in the short term. We do, however, use knowledge schemas, retrieval practice strategies and formative assessment throughout the unit to assess children’s understanding and inform future planning. The end of unit tasks, which involve using the knowledge schemas, are designed as a way for pupils to demonstrate the essential knowledge, vocabulary and skills that have been gathered throughout a unit of work to answer the unit learning question.
We have selected our geography units of work to link closely to the National Curriculum. Many aspects affected our choices such as our locality, building links between topics and showing contrast between units. Additionally, as a MAT, we offer the children an exciting trip and residential calendar which enables teachers to teach the children a large part of the National Curriculum including ‘Locational Knowledge’ and ‘Geographical Skills’. As well as this, the children go on a ‘Weekly Visit’ visiting a different place in the world each week which again supports the ‘Locational Knowledge’ element of the National Curriculum.
