Intent:

At Rolleston Primary School, we have a Geography curriculum designed to enrich children’s knowledge of the world around them and gain a better understanding of how the world works. We want children to not only develop their geographical knowledge and facts but also the skills needed for them to become independent, geographically aware citizens. As this quote from the National Geographic emphasizes: ‘Geographic skills are used in making decisions important to everyday life—where to buy or rent a home; where to get a job; how to get to work or to a friend’s house; and where to shop, vacation, or go to school’, and this supports our rationale to make Geography a more valued part of the Rolleston curriculum as for our children, these skills are invaluable.

Implementation:

At Rolleston, Geography is delivered weekly as a discrete subject on alternative half terms. By doing so, it means that during the Geography lessons there is time to both explore the skills and to learn the knowledge. By delivering discrete lessons separate from other curriculum subjects, this helps make the key geographical skills explicit and also allows time for children to use and apply these skills in the lesson. There is also a focus of vocabulary across the curriculum, and in Geography this will mean children learn the topic specific vocabulary but are also given the opportunity to use these in context when using our oracy work to discuss and debate during the lessons and ultimately when answering their enquiry question at the end of the unit.

Impact:

Our geography curriculum has been designed to encourage children to explore the world around them, and to make sense of that they see. Children are taught about both their surrounding area and places around the world and are encouraged to compare and contrast these places and to examine why there are such varied places across the world. The most impactful topics do this by having an enquiry question to answer as the overall outcome of the topic, as this means children can apply the knowledge and skills they have gained over the topic and show their understanding when answering an enquiry question. This also means children have to opportunity to independently plan fieldwork or conduct research to help them answer this question, again meaning they can apply the skills they are learning. To plan this, we will use the ‘Geographical enquiry and skills’ document produced by the Geographical Association to ensure that children are taught all of the key skills and enquiry types during their primary school time. This is something which is currently being planned and developed across the school. We are working on developing a clear structure for each topic to ensure consistency of teaching and to enable all children to apply their learning.