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Geography

‘The study of geography is about more than just memorising places on a map, it’s about understanding the complexity of our world’

Barrack Obama

Intent

At Dringhouses, our geography sessions aim to equip children with the skills and knowledge to understand our changing world and inspire children to contribute responsibly to its development. We are committed to supporting sustainability and promoting an awareness of global issues through discussions sparked by the news and weekly assemblies. We regularly invite relevant visitors into school such as former pupil James Field, who is a marine Biologist, and helped us to celebrate World Ocean day. He spent time in each class raising awareness of plastic pollution and current issues affecting our oceans. Other visitors include the local councillor, Stephen Fenton who spoke to the children about sustainability in Dringhouses and staff from the Allerton Waste Centre who spoke about how the children can be young leaders when it comes to waste. If you think you can add to our visitor offer, please get in touch!

With the support of initiatives such as ‘Walk to School Week’, we encourage healthy, sustainable ways to travel to school and with FODS and the Eco warriors we have set up an active recycling bank to encourage less waste.

We aim to utilise our local environment as much as possible throughout our geography learning and take part in education visits where appropriate both in the immediate vicinity around school and slightly further afield. All geography educational visits are inclusive for all children.

Implementation

At a whole school level, we ensure all areas of the geography programme of study from the National Curriculum are covered in depth and that there is a clear progression of skills (which can be seen through our planning, children’s work and the progression grids). The children’s knowledge and skills, as a result, are built on year-on-year for geography. Objectives are covered appropriately to ensure key skills and knowledge are revisited in different ways throughout the school, where appropriate, giving these chance to be embedded. This detailed planning is monitored by team-leaders and the geography lead who are also available to support throughout the process of planning and teaching. This enables high-quality geography lessons to be planned and taught throughout the school, with individual teacher development supported where required or requested.

Geography is assessed throughout the year and then monitored by the geography lead. Provision is subsequently put in place by class teachers, where appropriate, for those children who need it.

Children are excited and engaged in geography lessons which form the core of many of our learning projects. There is high participation in class discussions during lessons and work of a high quality is produced. Learning objectives are mapped out throughout each year group and planned in accordingly to allow for progression throughout the school. Children are asked about their prior knowledge at the beginning of each learning project and key questions are gathered about what they would like to include on our learning journey. Our learning journey displays provide a key focal point in every classroom where children can be reminded of their prior learning and they can follow the key questions throughout the half term to know where their learning is heading.

At the beginning of every geography lesson, children are asked key questions about their learning during the previous lesson to help them to embed the key knowledge and skills which have already been covered during that learning project.

Each key stage aims to maximise opportunities to partake in educational visits both locally and further afield. We aim to offer more and more opportunities for geography learning to take place outside of the classroom. EYFS children explore the local area during their biweekly forest school sessions which allows them to build the foundations of being children who are curious about their local area and the geographical features they may find in it.

Please see our Geography Progression plan here.

Our History subject leader is Mrs Lucy Hopkins

Please contact her for further information.

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