Geography

Our Geography curriculum is designed to help pupils to develop an interest in and understanding of the world, the United Kingdom and our local area through exploration of physical and human geography, map work and fieldwork. We deliver our Geography curriculum through carefully planned units which enable skills, knowledge and understanding to build and develop across the school from Reception to Year 4.

At Our Lady of Mount Carmel, we work closely with middle schools within the Magnificat MAC to ensure planned progression equips children with the disciplinary and substantive knowledge they need to be successful geographers at upper key stage 2 and beyond, where they will study more complex geographical ideas, such as sustainable development, at a greater depth.

Through our curriculum, we aim to deepen children’s disciplinary and substantive knowledge by:

• developing an understanding of key geographical concepts including place, location and environment.
• investigating geographical similarities and differences between different places using a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs, fieldwork and observational skills.
• exploring the impact of human geography (including types of settlement, land use and economic activity) and physical geography (including climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the water cycle)
• ensuring children have the substantive knowledge they need at KS1 and LKS2, using maps to locate continents, countries, states, capital cities, oceans, rivers and climate zones.
• developing a broad geographical vocabulary which children are expected to use to explain, describe and interpret.

The National Curriculum

• The national curriculum for geography aims to ensure that all pupils:

•  develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes
• understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time
•  are competent in the geographical skills needed to:
  •  collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes
  •  interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
  •  communicate geographical information in a variety of ways, including through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and writing at length.

Geography Policy