Miss Mockridge - Geography Leader

"Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future." - Michael Palin

At Mesne Lea Primary School, we strive to inspire in our pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and to provide them with the opportunities to become global citizens, deepening their interest and wonder in exploring their own place in the world. They will have a clear understanding of their responsibilities within their own society whilst also having a sound awareness into the sustainability of an ever-changing world.

Our curriculum is designed so that our children will develop a sense of their world on a local, national and global level understanding both how people affect their environment and how environments affect human behaviour.

The Mesne Lea curriculum has been designed so that pupils can initially explore their local area in depth – so they understand the human, social, physical and recreational features of their locality and can then make meaningful comparisons with other places in the UK, Europe and the wider world. Children have many opportunities to investigate the rich diversity of environments, climates and settlements across continents and hemispheres – applying and developing their literacy and mathematical skills as they undertake research, and extending their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development as they appreciate the lives and experiences of others. Areas of study are interleaved with the aim of aiding retrieval and of knowledge becoming part of children’s long term memory.

Through the teaching of geography, Mesne Lea intends to:

• Increase pupils’ awareness, knowledge and understanding of other cultures.
• Develop pupils’ key skills, including how to use and interpret maps.
• Make pupils aware of environmental problems at a local, regional and global level.
• Encourage pupils to commit to sustainable development.
• Develop a variety of skills, including those in relation to problem-solving, computing and collecting data in order to form conclusions.
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Foundation Stage

Within the Early Years Foundation Stage, activities and experiences for pupils are based on the seven areas of learning and development. Provision focuses upon four specific areas:

• Literacy
• Maths
• Understanding the world
• Expressive arts and design

In particular, geography-based activities play an important role in developing pupils’ understanding of the world, helping them to comprehend a world beyond their local community.

Key Stage 1 Geography

In Key Stage 1, pupils will develop knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. They will be taught how to use basic vocabulary pertaining to human and physical geography. The focus of the KS1 geography curriculum is location and place knowledge with human and physical geography and fieldwork interwoven across the year. In Year 1, the four countries of the United Kingdom as well as Australia, Artic and Antarctic are interleaved throughout autumn, spring and summer terms. In Year 2, the focus is on the continents and oceans which are also interleaved, along with fieldwork, throughout the three terms. Year 2 will specifically focus on a non –European Country such as Africa.

Key Stage 2 Geography

Pupils should extend their knowledge and understanding beyond the local area to include the United Kingdom and Europe, and North and South America. This will include the location and characteristics of a range of the world’s significant human and physical features. The areas of place and locational knowledge, physical geography, human geography and local geography (Y3 and Y5) / fieldwork (Y4 and Y6) are interleaved and revisited every term. They are taught during the same academic weeks to allow the Subject Lead to monitor progression across the school.

Geography is delivered in weekly lessons with retrieval practice embedding in each lesson. This will give teachers a clear understanding of knowledge retention. Areas of study will be interleaved to develop schema knowledge and aid retrieval so that information can extend to children’s long term memory. A schema is created when pupils organise knowledge into meaningful units. Knowledge webs present topics around the threshold concepts (big ideas) in geography by using relevant knowledge categories. 

By the time the children leave Year 6, they will be confident in explaining what it means to be a geographer – that a geographer can locate and describe places across the world and investigate them using resources; can talk about patterns in countries in terms of weather and physical and human features; and can use geographical vocabulary to describe a places location and their physical and human features.