Geography

Subject Lead - Miss R.Outhwaite

At Priory Lane Community School, we are all geographers!

Here at Priory Lane Community School, we strive to offer a high quality geography curriculum which enables pupils to develop a sense of place, whilst exploring, investigating and understanding the man-made and natural processes that impact on our planet. We aim to inspire pupils’ curiosity and fascination about the world and its people.

The national curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
• 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, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

Our geography curriculum has been carefully sequenced to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge, skills and vocabulary, ensuring pupils’ prior knowledge is built upon. Geography is taught in termly units throughout the year. We have identified the key knowledge and skills of each blocked topic and these are mapped across the school, ensuring that knowledge builds progressively and that children develop skills systematically. Learning tasks are selected and designed to provide appropriate challenge to all learners.

The geography curriculum at Priory Lane Community School looks like:

• Lessons where children regularly use maps and atlases to help develop map skills
• Opportunities to use digital mapping software such as Digi-Map in order to support their learning and explore areas in our local area and further afield.
• Children are regularly provided with opportunities to explore, collect data and make comparisons during fieldwork lessons.

• As part of our Geography topic lessons, “knowledge” sessions are delivered at the start of each lesson to revisit past learning and focus on recapping key vocabulary and basic geographical skills.

• A geography curriculum enhanced through a variety of first-hand experiences including the use of fieldwork and trips.
• Classrooms have a globe, map of the United Kingdom and World Map, which are actively used within lessons. Teachers  make use of these resources in other lessons, i.e. locating the country a story is set in (English), locating where a historical figure was born
• Interactive displays in school corridors and library for the children to utilise in their free time

Geography documents...