Geography

At Bywell CE Junior School we recognize the value that a high-quality Geography curriculum can offer to our children.

A high-quality curriculum will enable all pupils to learn together and inspire in pupils a curiosity about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Our aim is to provide an interesting and varied curriculum that intrigues our children, and through equipping children with specific locational knowledge, instill a sense of compassion and understanding of diverse places and people around the world.

Throughout their time at our school, following the National Curriculum guidance, we teach the children about specific geographical terms in relation to their local community and the world around them by comparing and contrasting various continents. We aim to provide opportunities for pupils to gain a greater knowledge of places around the world and a deeper understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

At Bywell CE Junior School, we want children to enjoy and love learning about Geography by gaining not only knowledge in the classroom, but geographical skills outdoors as well. Through the use of fieldwork opportunities in the local area we aim to bring geographical skills to life, and with links to other curriculum areas we hope to inspire an enduring interest in global geographical issues for years to come.

• Medium term planning will be reviewed to ensure that knowledge-based lessons are planned for and learning opportunities executed regularly.
• Teachers subject knowledge will be audited and subject specific support will be provided where needed.
• Discrete geography lessons are planned and resourced to provide high-quality teaching and learning opportunities. Key geography questions are included to challenge understanding.
• All children will be taught by their class teacher, with activities to support SEND planned accordingly. Pre-and post- unit quizzes will be used to monitor progress. Memory quizzes will be used to monitor long term knowledge retainment of previous years learning.
• Children are expected to use subject specific vocabulary within lessons.
• Geography lessons will be monitored across the school to assess how well the children are achieving geographical knowledge and skills. (in the form of learning walks, book celebrations, catch-up jotters and the use of pupil voice).
• Learning wall information will be captured and stored for future reference.

• Recording of Pre- and post- unit memory quizzes is improving allowing for a quantitative method of measuring progress for individual pupils.

• Children across the school still remain positive about their learning, being able to discuss their learning and the parts they enjoy the most. This has been seen most recently in Class showcase assemblies.

• Year 4, 5 and 6 have moved onto their Fieldwork lessons, developing questioning skills, collecting data and representing this in various forms including tally charts and bar charts.

• A new ‘Geographical skills’ unit has been planned for use in Year 3 PPA lessons for the second half of the summer term, focusing on mapping skills, map reading, cardinal directions, grid references and sketch mapping.

Fine tune units further in order to streamline lessons.

Streamline smartboards to reduce excessive pages.

Create resource folders for each lesson on the shared drive so that all resources are available in one place.

Ensure that all pre and post unit quiz results are recorded accurately.

The teaching order of the units will be arranged to best fit with term lengths and linked subjects- especially Year 4 with the impact of swimming lessons next summer.

Monitor work books as usual.

Gather pupils voice about the impact of Geography.

Support with high quality displays.

Complete a ‘stock check’ of Geographical resources and replace where necessary.

Teachers are aware of the requirements for each unit.

Memory quizzes are used both pre- and post- unit. – High scorers in Year 4 (following Ofsted question) have scored highly as the unit is linked to an earlier writing unit.

Quizzes have been tweaked as the year has progressed.

When the units have been taught this year has been affected with the introduction of swimming sessions in Year 4 and 5.

Pupils have been asked informally about their geography lessons. Children have been positive about the units taught. Year 3 got a bit mixed up with their history lessons but also loved making mini volcano models with super labels. Year 4 really enjoyed finding out about Sicily and also loved the Amazon. Year 5 especially enjoyed work on Rivers and created some fantastic models and Year 6 have produced detailed work on mountains and natural disasters.

Work books continue to be neatly presented across all year groups.

Corridor and classroom displays are being maintained at a high standard, with key vocabulary, informative posters and samples of children’s work.