Our Curriculum

Geography

At Longvernal Primary School, we ensure that we inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching equips our children with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Our curriculum breadth is adapted to the context of our school to secure pupils’ social and cultural development by placing a particular focus on vocabulary and providing experiences that our pupils may not otherwise be exposed to such as visiting We the Curious and Bristol Zoo.

As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

The curriculum is sequenced in long and medium-term plans to help pupils build cumulative knowledge towards agreed milestones or expected standards, creating a secure schema on which to build throughout their school career. The key subject content is organised through ‘Big Ideas’ which organise new knowledge systematically and ensure a logical progression. In keeping with recent research into meta-cognition, to ensure their learning is embedded, quizzes and other low stakes tests are a regular feature of lessons. Our curriculum design helps pupils to read widely by ensuring high quality texts such Shackleton’s Journey that relate to geography are studied during Whole Class Guided Reading.

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.