Geography at Yohden Primary School

Intent  

At Yohden Primary School, we aim to inspire children’s curiosity, interest to explore more about the world that we live in, and its people, which aims to ignite a love of learning. Children investigate a range of places – both in Britain and abroad – to help develop their knowledge and understanding of the Earth’s physical and human processes. We want to enable our learners to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it. We are committed to providing children with opportunities to investigate and make enquiries about their local area so that they can develop of real sense of who they are, their heritage and what makes our local area unique and special.  

Teaching should equip children to be able to develop their geographical skills and to improve their knowledge through studying places, people and natural and human environments. The children will take part in fieldwork opportunities throughout their learning at Yohden Primary School and they will explore the local area around them. 

Personal Development & British Values:  

In Geography, we are given the opportunity to express our individuality through local area studies and comparing our culture to that of others. We are respectful and tolerant of other countries culture, lifestyle, and beliefs. We understand people have different views and opinions and that that these make them who they are. We are tolerant to such views and opinions and apply these attitudes when working with those who have different cultures, faiths, and beliefs. We explore the world through Geography and continue to do this with respect towards the cultures, faiths, and beliefs of others we encounter. 

Implementation 

Planning and Assessment 

•      Geography units are planned and taught using Yohden’s Long Term and Medium Term planning documents for Geography which use guidance and planning ideas from Durham Units. It has been made bespoke to our local area. 

•      Medium term planning documents are used by teachers to plan lessons, adding additional provision to support learning e.g SEND/GD learners.  

•     Teachers use the Humanities progression document to support their planning and teaching of skills, knowledge and understanding. This document shows the links between History and Geography. 

•     Assessments are made using the MTP assessment of skills and knowledge statements and after the unit of learning has been taught assessments.   

Teaching and Learning 

•      Teachers and children use a range of resources such as an atlas, globes, google earth, Digi maps, photographs and other maps.  

•     Geographical vocabulary displayed on working walls and/or word banks for SEN to support learning.  

•     Reading area to contain books, (non-fiction) related to Geography topic.  

•     Make lesson type specific e.g map work, location knowledge, fieldwork etc.  

•     Each class to complete fieldwork across the Year group at least once per term.  

•      Learning activities in and outside the classroom e.g school trips/fieldwork/local area. 

•     Teachers are encouraged to consider opportunities available to use the school grounds and the local area to enable children to base learning on first hand experiences to enhance teaching and learning in Geography. 

•     Start of lessons have 5 minute retrieval from previous lessons to support geography knowledge.   

•     Range of activities for learners e.g written accounts, comparing maps, looking at changes over time, fieldwork activities and drawing maps. 

•     Each class to complete at least one fieldwork activity in every unit. 

What you will see in lessons:  

•     Content and subject pedagogical knowledge – skilled teachers with a good understanding of geography pedagogy teaching engaging lessons.  

•      Working walls – these show the overarching unit question, the lesson question, new vocabulary which will be introduced and used in each lesson, the substantive knowledge children will be learning and the disciplinary knowledge (key concepts)  

•     Meaningful contexts - children learning by being challenged in a series of well-designed geographical enquiry tasks linked to meaningful contexts. Today’s enquiry context why do we need different time zones around the world? Are all cities in the UK the same? 

•     Teachers supporting – by guiding children to raise questions and design enquiries to find the answers to geographical questions or hypothesis. E.g. Do all cities have cathedrals? How do we determine if a place is a city or a town? Why does the same continent or country have different time zones? 

•     Lesson Structure – At the beginning of each lesson the children are introduced to the lesson’s enquiry question, the appropriate geographical vocabulary, the lesson substantive knowledge (Core Knowledge we what children to learn) as well as the unit disciplinary knowledge (the golden threads which interweave through each unit) 

•     SEND and LA scaffolding – where appropriate children will be given word banks, stem sentence openers, writing frames, ‘chunked’ instructions and modelled examples 

Long Term Plan