Geography
Our aims for geography at St Gabriel’s Catholic Primary School:
- To reflect St Gabriel’s Mission Statement
- To inspire the children to have a curiosity and understanding of events, places, and people throughout history.
- To learn about the major events in the history of our country and of the world using investigative, analytical and communication skills. Additionally, they will learn how these events may have influenced one another,
- To develop a chronological knowledge within which the children can organise their understanding of the past.
- To understand how the past was different from the present and that people of other times and places may have had different values and attitudes from ours.
- To develop an understanding of the history of our local area and how life may be different now.
Intent
At St Gabriel’s Catholic Primary School, through our Geography curriculum, we aim to expand geographical vocabulary, increase our children’s knowledge and curiosity of the wider world and promote high aspirations. We seek to create a life-long love of the subject, through teaching our children about diverse places, people, and resources. Through the study of natural and human environments, as well as physical and human processes, our desire is to provide our children with a sense of awe and wonder about the world they live in. As they continue on their journey of Geography, we aim to foster a deep understanding of the subject that develops alongside their geographical skills. Our aim is that our children go on to apply these skills across all subjects, as well as in their futures beyond St Gabriel’s Catholic Primary School. Our curriculum is designed to provide our children with the subject specific language they need to describe, question, and discuss the world, as well as their place in it. We aim to produce well- rounded individuals by providing our children with opportunities to expand their cultural capital and experiences of the world.
Implementation
Teachers are encouraged to start lessons by revisiting prior knowledge as often as possible. This will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections. Staff will model the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge, and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. We support learning with trips to inspire our children and widen their cultural experiences. Teachers are also encouraged to use a range of resources such as videos, photographs and newspaper articles during lessons to help create immersive learning experiences.
Impact
Our geography curriculum is taught to a high quality, showing clear progression and provides additional opportunities for building the children’s cultural capital. At St Gabriel’s we provide a fun, engaging, high quality geography education, that provides children with good knowledge and understanding of the world around them. Throughout teaching, teachers are able to assess pupil outcomes and development of key knowledge and skills against the objectives. These outcomes are monitored and tracked, with planning and learning evaluated and adapted. A cycle of monitoring takes place by the subject leader and senior leaders. This includes book scrutinies, learning walks and pupil consultations.
Children at St Gabriel’s enjoy geography and this results in motivated learners with a good geographical understanding.
