St Paul's Catholic Primary School

Intent

In St. Paul's Catholic Primary we are passionate about teaching and learning in Geography as we strongly believe that it helps us develop strong questioning skills. 

We follow the programmes of study of the National Curriculum for Geography. Every teacher in St. Paul's works their hardest to equip pupils with knowledge about places and people, resources in the environment and an understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the framework to explain how the Earth’s features are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

We deliver exciting lessons so that children at St. Paul's can develop geographical skills: collecting and analysing data, using maps, atlases, globes, aerial photographs and digital mapping to name, identify and locate countries, continents and oceans. We want the children to be able to communicate their learning in a variety of ways. We want the children to enjoy and love learning about geography both inside and outside the classroom, including educational visits to develop fieldwork and to practise their geographical skills. 

Implementation

All learning will start by revisiting prior knowledge and the ‘hook lesson’ which excites children about their future learning.

The first objective will be scaffolded to support children to recall previous learning and make connections. Staff will model explicitly the subject-specific vocabulary, knowledge and skills relevant to the learning to allow them to integrate new knowledge into larger concepts. All staff will support their children by using a range of visual resources, for instance knowledge organisers, timelines and pictorials. The consistent use of these resources supports children at St Paul’s to retain new facts and vocabulary in their long term memory. Knowledge organisers are used for pre-teaching, to support home learning and also as a part of daily review. These are now kept within their folders so that children are able to access prior learning.

Impact

At St Paul’s Catholic Primary, pupil voice, learning walks and regular monitoring show that pupils are confident and able to talk about what they have learnt in geography using subject specific vocabulary. Pupil voice also demonstrates that pupils enjoy geography and are able to recall their learning over time. Pupils work demonstrates that geography is taught at an age appropriate standard across each year group with opportunities planned in for pupils working at greater depth. Work is of good quality and demonstrates pupils are acquiring knowledge, skills and vocabulary in an appropriate sequence.

At St Paul's, we use knowledge organisers in Geography lessons to support us in remembering more of the key vocabulary from each term which is built upon throughout our time at the school. They help us to build on previous learning as well as preteaching key ideas and skills. Please see an example of a Geography knowledge organiser below. You should see more examples on class pages.

Here are some examples of the fantastic learning we complete in Geography at St Paul's.