Curriculum Intent

We intend Geography to inspire children with the curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. At Boxmoor Primary School we aim to provide our children 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. 

Geography teaching at Boxmoor Primary School aims to follow the specifications of the National Curriculum; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum and ensuring the progressive development of Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography and skills and fieldwork. 

Aims

The aims of our Geography curriculum are to develop pupils who:

• 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

Implementation 

Geography teaching at Boxmoor Primary School delivers the requirements of the National Curriculum by starting with the children's homes and widening out to the whole world as well as ,new for this term, use of the website Oddizzi to enhance our curriculum and support virtual fieldwork and up to date examples of natural disasters.

Geography lessons are broken down into half-termly or termly units and an emphasis is placed on Geographical vocabulary, allowing children to talk about the topic using the correct terminology. Each unit of work has Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography, Geography skills and fieldwork.

Within the EYFS setting, Geography is an integral part of children’s learning journey under the umbrella of understanding of the world. The children talk about their immediate environment using knowledge from first hand experience, discussion, stories, non fiction texts and maps. They begin to explain similarities and differences life in this country and life in other countries as well as the natural world and contrasting environments. 

Impact

Our Geography Curriculum is planned to demonstrate progression and build on and embed current skills. We focus on progression of Location and Place knowledge and growing understanding of the difference between physical and human Geography, map and fieldwork skills and teaching of vocabulary also forms part of the units of work.

If children are achieving the knowledge and skills in lessons, then they are deemed to be making good or better progress.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice). 
• Book look by the subject coordinator.
• Governor monitoring with our subject Geography link governor.
• Annual reporting and tracking of standards across the curriculum.
• Photo and video evidence of the pupils fieldwork learning. 

Curriculum coverage

The following are the units that the children currently learn within each year group.

Early Years	Me and My World Seasons and Weather	Wonderful World  Animals, Seasons	Oh the Places You’ll Go Journeys – safari, off to the seaside
Year 1	What is your home like?		Who is the Loch Ness Monster and where does it live? Would you like to go to Australia?
Year 2		Frozen - Cold places	Amazing Africa - Hot places
Year 3		Region of the United Kingdom Human and physical aspects of UK; cites of UK. Our local Area vs the wider world (India)  Comparison
Year 4	Earthquakes and Volcanoes - diary entry	Our European neighbours - Italy Physical Geography -  Settlement and land use water cycle
Year 5	Mountains  North America  Human Geography - the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water  Persuasive Posters		Rivers - Bulbourne
Year 6		South America Rainforests  Physical, Human and Environmental Geography Climate zones, biomes  trade links - palm oil Discussion text Poetry text

If you, or someone you know, has knowledge or experience connected to one or more of the units that we study please contact the Geography coordinator, who would be pleased to welcome further contributions to our learning.