Geography at Cuddington and Dinton
Intent
At Cuddington and Dinton C of E School we provide a high-quality geography education, inspiring pupils 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 knowledge about diverse places, people, resources, 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 framework and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.
Implementation
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. We ensure that geography has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, we feel this is important in enabling all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences.
The geography curriculum is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and vocabulary document. This document is used to plan geography lessons suitable to a class’s interests. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and knowledge is taught progressively.
Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement. The subject provides excellent opportunities to enhance the learning of more able pupils through the investigations, analysing sources and writing extending pieces.
Educational visits are encouraged as an opportunity for teachers to plan geography learning outside the classroom. Residential’s to Shortenills, France and local studies both at KS1 and KS2 provide ample opportunities for fieldwork.
Impact
Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school.
Our geography curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression of knowledge, skills and vocabulary. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments.
We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:
- Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught
- Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning
- Images of the children’s practical learning
- Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice)
- Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work
- Moderation with other schools
- Marking of written work in books