Intent

At St. Leonard’s Primary School, our geography curriculum aims to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for geography; providing a broad, balanced, ambitious, and inclusive curriculum while also ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge, and skills. We strive to foster inspirational, independent, and inquiring learners who are encouraged to explore the world around them with curiosity and critical thinking. 

Our goal is to inspire a deep fascination about the world and its people that will stay with our pupils throughout their lives. The curriculum is designed to be inclusive, ensuring all students, regardless of their background or abilities, can engage with and enjoy geography. It will equip pupils with a strong understanding of diverse places and communities and a deep knowledge of physical and human processes that shape our planet. 

Also, we want to empower children with an understanding of local, national, and global ecological issues, inspiring them to become independent thinkers capable of making informed and positive changes. Through this inspirational and inquiring approach, our students will be prepared to address the environmental and social challenges of the future, becoming responsible global citizens.

Implementation

Learning knowledge is not an endpoint in itself, it is a springboard to learning more knowledge. Each unit in our overview is underpinned by rich, substantive knowledge and ambitious vocabulary, whilst also ensuring children are developing their disciplinary knowledge (geographical skills). Each unit of work is planned carefully to ensure concepts are taught in optimal order to support children's understanding. As well as developing a breadth of geographical knowledge, we want our children to become skilful geographers. Each unit of work has an emphasis on geographical enquiry where children investigate geographically framed questions. In addition to substantive and disciplinary knowledge, children will develop their experiential knowledge through carefully planned fieldwork. 

Some units are essentially human geography; others physical geography, but most are holistic geography. Place studies start local and increase in scale to regional, national and global, allowing for revisiting, developing and challenging ideas and concepts. Similarly, consideration of the weather and seasons progresses to a more in-depth study of the importance of climate and finally addresses protecting environments from global warming and combating climate change. Knowledge and key geographical concepts sit at the core of our curriculum to ensure the defining characteristics of the subject are ever-present.

Geography is taught each term and alternates with history.