Intent

The intention of the Geography Curriculum at Willow Bank Junior School is to inspire children’s curiosity and interest to explore the world that we live in and its people. We intend to equip pupils with skills to build knowledge through studying people, places, climate, environments and processes. Through our teaching of geography, we encourage our children to be inquisitive learners, to pose their own questions and to find answers by using investigation, exploration and research. In developing and modelling the vocabulary of geography, we aim to enable our children to communicate what they have learnt and seek to deepen children’s understanding of the word and their place in it.

Implementation

At Willow Bank Junior School, our Geography curriculum is planned in line with the knowledge and skills outlined in the National Curriculum for KS2 using the Chris Quigley Curriculum Companion. Geography is covered through subject specific teaching and is taught on an alternate week basis.

The Geography curriculum is underpinned by three threshold concepts. These are: -

• Investigate places
• Investigate patterns
• Communicate geographically

Within our three threshold concepts we have seven knowledge categories. These enable the children to identify common themes and make links through different geographical concepts.

Topics are chosen from “Milestone 2” for Lower Key Stage 2 and “Milestone 3” for Upper Key Stage 2.  In the main topics are repeated between Lower and Upper Key Stage 2. This is to enable knowledge to be introduced then deepened and advanced later.

Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long-term retention. In working this way, children have opportunities for frequent and regular retrieval of previously learned content. However, within each year group as well there are some discrete units to build in more fieldwork opportunities as well as ensuring full National Curriculum coverage.

Fieldwork is taught within each year group across the school. This does include local fieldwork as well as virtual fieldwork. Where possible at least one piece of fieldwork is completed each term.

Impact

The impact of our geography curriculum is measured by the outcomes in children’s books as well as throughout discussions in the lessons.  Teachers use opportunities within the lesson and at the start to assess and recap prior learning, including through quizzing. Children complete assessment tasks at the end of each unit they complete.

We measure the impact of our Geography curriculum through monitoring work, listening to the children’s attitudes about geography through pupil voice, by taking learning walks/ book looks and termly data analysis.