Geography

“I’ve learned you are never too small to make a difference” Greta Thunberg.

“The future of humanity and indeed all life on earth depends on us” David Attenborough.

At Girnhill Infant School, we provide children with a high-quality geography education, which inspires pupils to foster curiosity and fascination about the world and the people who live in it. We believe that it is imperative to equip children with the knowledge about diverse places, people and environments.

Pupils will be taught over a series of lessons which include:

  • Revisiting previously taught knowledge and skills
  • Geographical Vocabulary
  • Exposure to investigating, observing and discussion
  • Effectively use world maps, atlases and globes

At Girnhill Infant School we expose our pupils to a breadth of challenges, inspires learners to develop a love of geography and encourage them to be able to locate and identify different countries in the world. Through the use of discussion and investigating, we intend to promote our learners to have the fundamental geographical skills and locational knowledge by using world maps, atlases and globes.

We are ambitious in our expectations of all pupils, ensuring strong cross curricular links are made to develop children holistically.

Intent
At Girnhill Infant School, we provide children with a high-quality geography education, which inspires pupils to foster curiosity and fascination about the world and the people who live in it. We believe that it is imperative to equip children with the knowledge about diverse places, people and environments. At Girnhill, Geography is taught through the ambitious National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, enhanced and supplemented with reach out Geography curriculum in order to support staff to plan small progressive steps in a specific and coherent teaching sequence. We are ambitious in our expectations in all children, ensuring cross-curricular links are made to develop children holistically. We map the National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework for geography into a coherent and sequential progression model that outlines the substantive knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, vocabulary and sentence stems needed at each stage that will build cumulatively towards learners being able to use and apply the knowledge, skills and understanding across a range of concepts. At Girnhill, we value oracy as a powerful tool for learning in which children develop and deepen their subject knowledge and their understanding of Geography through talk in the classroom, which has been carefully planned, modelled and scaffolded in order for them to communicate their understanding effectively. Vocabulary is purposeful and progressive and modelled through the use of flashcards and teacher talk using “my turn your turn”. Sentence stems are used to provide children with a model on how to speak like a geographer and scaffold their talk effectively. Carefully considered questions are aimed to target misconceptions, gaps in learning and enable children to develop their explanations.
Implementation
We ensure that all teachers, including those who are non-specialists, have excellent subject knowledge and are supported in the implementation of the curriculum by the geography subject leader.  Oracy is woven throughout Geography. The progression grid details the oracy expectations of each year group within the four strands of good talk. It also includes the tiered technical vocabulary all learners need to acquire and use in order to talk like a geographer. This will be modelled using flash cards, teacher talk and opportunities are made for children to practice using the vocabulary throughout lessons. Suggested sentence stems are provided and used in order to scaffold responses. Opportunities for children to practise the skill of presentational talk will be further developed in geography through the use of mode B learning such as group presentations about the different continents of the world.

Through using Rosenshine’s Principles, learners have the opportunity to revisit and build on prior knowledge. Daily review is used at the beginning of every session in order to activate prior learning to attach new learning to. High-quality modelling of skills and language is offered to our children and scaffolds are provided for difficult tasks. Visual success criteria is provided for learners every lesson. Classroom working walls demonstrate prior learning, promote the vocabulary specific to current learning, worked modelled examples, success criteria and visual sentence stems.

Impact
Children are demonstrating geographical thinking and approaches to become a fluent geographer thinker. The children are talking like a geographer by having an understanding of the world and using maps, atlases and globes. The children are using key vocabulary through pupil voice, which is evident during lesson observations and floor books. Pupil voice focuses on the ‘knowing more and remembering more’ principle.