Geography

"A well-planned geographical enquiry can encourage curiosity

and require students to use their imagination to think about the things they haven’t included as well as the things that they have."

  Rogers (2017)

To be successful in geography, students need to be given the tools to think critically about geographical issues, which in most cases don’t have one single solution.

As geography is a real subject and the things studied are real issues facing the world today, we need to equip students with the skills necessary to go out into a world where they will be faced with data and information to process on a daily basis.

As geography teachers, we need to cultivate the students who arrive in our classrooms, so that they develop the key attributes to become critical thinkers; to be curious and have a desire to learn more and seek out evidence as well as being open to new ideas; to have a healthy scepticism and questioning attitude about information they are presented with; and to be humble enough to accept that their ideas and opinions may not always be right when they are faced with new information.

Our Geography lessons are structured carefully to develop a secure understanding of the world, applying key cross-curricular skills that develop spiral learning and metacognition in the following areas:

• Comparing locations;
• Investigating;
• Researching different sources;
• Writing and talking about places;
• Asking and answering questions.

Locational knowledge

We ensure that children have a secure understanding of where they are in the World and it is essential that children know where they are locally and how their locality links to significant places nearby and nationally. Children understand where places and events take place in the news as well as understanding the features of our planet. This is key to understanding our world.

Can you locate St Mary's? 

Look at this Victorian map of

our town...can you spot

any changes?

Leek is a market town in the county of

Staffordshire which is shown below on the

map of England.

Place Knowledge

It is vital that children understand what the place they are studying is like, describing the climate and what the land looks like. Fundamentally, children should be able to describe what it would be like to live there.

Human and Physical Geography

Using a range of maps, atlases and globes, children use different sources to discover urban and rural places, the industries in which it thrives, and its transport links. It covers how the land was formed, and how it has changed over the years. Children investigate how rivers, mountains and volcanoes as well as how they are formed! They discover how these physical features shape the world and how we can work towards a more sustainable future. 

Geographical Skills and Fieldwork

All of the above is taught using practical fieldwork, where children enjoy the outdoors collecting live data to use within the classroom, as well as using a range of maps, scales, atlases and sources of information. Across the school, Children use Digimap to view different styles of maps! Not only does this widen their knowledge of maps, it also encourages their Digital Literacy!