Geography

At Churchfield CE Academy, we aspire to help children develop a keen interest in geography. We offer a variety of opportunities to explore the world of geography both inside the classroom and outside in the local environment in an engaging and safe way.   

Intent

At Churchfield, children are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as their place in it. Our geography curriculum enables children to develop knowledge and skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas. 
The curriculum is designed to ensure that teaching equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. 
As pupils progress through the school, their growing knowledge about the world helps them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments.  

 
Implementation

 
Our Geography curriculum covers the skills and knowledge outlined in the National Curriculum through broad, challenging and inspiring themes. A theme based approach is used to deliver the content within a meaningful context and wherever possible cross curricular links are explored. 
Children are given a wide variety of experiences both in the classroom and outside in the local environment. To support the children’s learning we encourage school visits and visitors into school enabling the children to gain first-hand experiences. Due to our school’s location, we are also very lucky to have access to the Lee Valley. The use of knowledge organisers assist teachers in planning their knowledge and skills and enable students to gain a better understanding of the expectations by the end of the unit. 

Impact

• Children are equipped with geographical skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for their next stage of learning. 

• Children develop their geographical knowledge and skills, to help them explore, navigate and understand the world around them and their place in it. 

• Children show excitement and enjoyment when learning about geography.  
   

SEND and Geography

For those children within the academy that have SEND, geography can be a valuable way for the children to explore with their peers the world around them. Through using differentiated maps they can develop an interest in other countries. The children are able to explore the countries and other aspects of geographical understanding through using scaffolds, visual prompts or sentence starters in a variety of ways. The learning is carefully differentiated to meet the needs of individual children. Geography is linked to other subject areas such as Science, English and computing where children use iPads and Purple Mash for gaining information and assessing their understanding. The children get to experience geography first hand and can see that it is all around them, through visiting the Lee Valley or walking around the local area.

The children in Key Stage One took a walk around the local area to learn about different homes and locations within about their local environment. They took pictures and notes to bring back in to the classroom to research further and create maps.