We want all our children to SHINE as geographers, map-readers, global citizens and environmentalists. 

Intent

At Cookham Rise, we aim to inspire children to be curious about the world and the people in it.

Sir Michael Palin 2011, television broadcaster and travel journalist describes geography as,

“a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant… geography is a subject which holds the key to our future.”

As teachers, our intent is to have a clear, purposeful and well-delivered curriculum. Utilising a scheme of work called Kapow, we can guarantee a clear path for progression, delivering a consistent approach across the school. We want pupils to develop the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in various ways and analyse and present their findings. Another aim is to build an awareness of how Geography shapes our lives at multiple scales and over time. We plan on teaching a solid knowledge of places and environments as well as ensuring fundamental values such as forming opinions, developing emotional intelligence and instilling empathies for other people’s personal geographies. Through their work in geography, children learn about the area they live in and compare their life in this locality to other regions in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. With their growing knowledge and understanding of human geography, our hope is that children will gain an appreciation of life in other cultures. We hope that children learning about other countries and cultures will have a desire to visit/experience other cultures on a first-hand basis. Geography teaching also motivates children to find out about the physical world and enables them to recognise the importance of sustainable development for the future of humankind.

The Kapow scheme encourages:

• A strong focus on developing both geographical skills and knowledge.

• Critical thinking, with the ability to ask perceptive questions and explain and analyse evidence.

• The development of fieldwork skills across each year group.

• A deep interest and knowledge of pupils’ locality and how it differs from other areas of the world.

• A growing understanding of geographical terms and vocabulary.

The Kapow Primary’s Geography scheme of work enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets in the National curriculum. The aims also align with those in the National curriculum.

Implementation

The National curriculum organises the Geography attainment targets under four subheadings or strands:

• Locational knowledge

• Place knowledge

• Human and physical geography

• Geographical skills and fieldwork

Kapow Primary’s Geography scheme has a clear progression of skills and knowledge within these four strands across each year group. It is a spiral curriculum, with essential knowledge and skills revisited with increasing complexity, allowing pupils to revise and build on their previous learning. Locational knowledge, in particular, will be reviewed in each unit to coincide with our belief that this will consolidate children’s understanding of key concepts, such as scale and place. Cross-curricular links are included throughout each unit, allowing children to make connections and apply their Geography skills to other areas of learning. The enquiry questions form the basis for the units, meaning that pupils gain a solid understanding of geographical knowledge and skills by applying them to answer enquiry questions. Each unit contains elements of geographical skills and fieldwork to ensure that fieldwork skills are practised as often as possible. Kapow Primary units follow an enquiry cycle that maps out the fieldwork process of question, observe, measure, record, and present, to reflect the elements mentioned in the National curriculum. This ensures children will learn how to decide on an area of enquiry, plan to measure data using a range of methods, capture the data and present it to a range of appropriate stakeholders in various formats. Fieldwork includes smaller opportunities on the school grounds to larger-scale visits to investigate physical and human features. Developing fieldwork skills within the school environment and revisiting them in multiple units enables pupils to consolidate their understanding of various methods. It also gives children the confidence to evaluate methodologies without always having to leave the school grounds and do so within the confines of a familiar place. This makes fieldwork regular and accessible while giving children a thorough understanding of their locality, providing a solid foundation when comparing it with other places. Knowledge organisers for each unit support pupils in building a foundation of factual knowledge by encouraging recall of key facts and vocabulary.

At the beginning of each term, a curriculum map is prepared and shared with parents and children. At Cookham Rise, we believe that the communication of our curriculum is vital to help engage parents in their children’s learning. Weekly class letters sent to parents and work uploaded to the Seesaw App help to make them aware which part of the geography unit has been covered that week and provide stimulus for conversations about their child’s learning. We aim for all of our pupils to access the curriculum and support children who may have difficulties with this through scaffolding their learning. We provide appropriate challenge to all learners, in line with the school’s commitment to inclusion. In KS2, the children complete daily workbooks that have a selection of questions/activities for the children to work through. Each day there is a question on maps/atlases to make sure that knowledge gained is not knowledge forgotten. The local area is fully utilised to achieve desired outcomes and bring a personal message to the children’s learning.

At Cookham Rise, we have chosen three key drivers that are reflected within each of the topics that we cover:

Opportunities - this encompasses our desire to introduce the children to as many possibilities as possible. We will enhance this through inviting speakers into school, as well as going on school trips.

Community - we are at the heart of a lovely school community, but want the children to learn about and understand the wider communities they are part of, both in the UK and the wider global community. We believe we have a responsibility to help children understand and embrace diversity.

Creativity - we aim to be as creative as possible in how we teach our children, but also want to encourage their creativity across the curriculum.

For how our drivers relate to our topics, please look at the topic webs saved in the website area for each class.

Impact

We want children to leave Cookham Rise with a combination of skills and knowledge that will serve them well on the next steps of their journey. We recognise that this comes from a broad curriculum offering alongside the teaching of British Values and life skills.

Outcomes in topic and literacy books help to evidence a broad and balanced geography curriculum and demonstrate children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge. Our use of Seesaw also helps to track the progress made by children in geography lessons. Teachers and children can review the achievement each lesson by using the school’s SHINE grids, which detail ‘I can’ statements as objectives for that lesson.

After implementing Kapow Primary Geography, pupils should leave Cookham Rise equipped with a range of skills and knowledge to enable them to study Geography with confidence at Key stage 3.

The expected impact of following the Kapow Primary Geography scheme of work is that children will:

• Compare and contrast human and physical features to describe and understand similarities and differences between various places in the UK, Europe and the Americas.
• Name, locate and understand where and why the physical elements of our world are located and how they interact, including processes over time relating to climate, biomes, natural disasters and the water cycle.
• Understand how humans use the land for economic and trading purposes, including how the distribution of natural resources has shaped this.
• Develop an appreciation for how humans are impacted by and have evolved around the physical geography surrounding them and how humans have had an impact on the environment, both positive and negative.
• Develop a sense of location and place around the UK and some areas of the wider world using the eight-points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and keys on maps, globes, atlases, aerial photographs and digital mapping.
• Identify and understand how various elements of our globe create positioning, including latitude, longitude, the hemispheres, the tropics and how time zones work, including night and day.
• Present and answer their own geographical enquiries using planned and specifically chosen methodologies, collected data and digital technologies.
• Meet the end of key stage expectations outlined in the National curriculum for Geography.

At the end of each year, teachers assess whether children have reached ARE (age Related Expectations), are working with greater depth within the subject or working towards the expected standard. This information is then shared with parents via end of year reports and entered onto the school tracking system – iTrack.

Through our opportunities driver, we aim for children to learn about careers related to geography from members of the local and wider community. Above all, we want every child at Cookham Rise to care about the environment and realise that our actions have consequences. We hope for them to be empathetic to the diverse cultures around the world and other people’s geographies and to become responsible global citizens.