At Hill Farm Primary School, through our geography curriculum, we aim to ignite children’s curiosity about the human and physical world around us and to equip them with the skills and knowledge to understand our diverse world and the impact we have on it.
Through offering a high-quality geography curriculum, we develop pupils’ key geographical skills through carefully mapped out concepts which encourage pupils to ask geographical questions, collect and interpret data using a range of approaches, evaluate and analyse their findings and communicate geographically.
In addition, the substantive knowledge children will acquire is progressively mapped to ensure that pupils build on prior learning and create geographical schemas that are linked via knowledge concepts, such as human and physical features (see below). Knowledge takeaways are identified for each lesson and shared through knowledge organisers. This knowledge is embedded into our pupils’ long-term memory through regular retrieval practice, making links across our curriculum and building on prior knowledge.
Each unit is enhanced through an aspirational experience that further embeds the knowledge and skills covered that term. These include a range of external visits, hands-on workshops and the use of digital technology, such as augmented reality.
All teaching at Hill Farm is planned around our six principles of learning and teaching, which ensure every lesson is GREAT! Pupils experience engaging and purposeful experiences that promote learning and where the needs of every child is met through effective adaptive teaching strategies. As a Voice 21 school, our curriculum has a strong oracy focus which provides pupils with regular opportunities to learn to talk and to learn through talk. High expectations of oracy and vocabulary are embedded throughout our geography curriculum.
The impact of our geography curriculum is measured through a range of approaches. Teachers make continual assessments throughout each lesson against our geography progression documents and the identified knowledge takeaways for each lesson. Further to this, pupils complete regular retrieval practice questions and an end of term POP (Proof of Progress) task to measure the impact of our curriculum, identify gaps in learning and inform next steps.