Purpose of Study
A high-quality geography education should 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 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. 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 provides the tools and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.
The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:
- develop contextual knowledge of the location of places, seas and oceans,
- including their defining physical and human characteristics
- understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical
- features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about
- spatial variation and change over time
- are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
- collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through
- experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical
- processes
- interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps,
- diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
- communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through
- maps and writing at length.
The scheme of learning has a clear progression of substantive knowledge and vocabulary and links to other curriculum subjects. Our curriculum is planned around the following geographical concepts: world, UK, local, human and physical, and investigation.
Progression in disciplinary knowledge (concepts such as location, physical, human, understanding places, significant places, climate and weather, environment and sustainability, map and atlas work, and fieldwork investigations) is integrated within the curriculum and developed alongside the substantive knowledge which the children learn each year.
