Geography

The Geography curriculum at Masefield is designed to inspire pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical processes. It studies people’s interaction with the environment and allows pupils to explore social, environmental, economic and political aspects of place, whilst comparing local and global settings.

At Masefield, Geography is taught as a discrete subject in order that the development of knowledge and skills is taught meaningfully and explicitly. Naturally, links are made to other areas of the curriculum but this does not dilute the quality and entitlement of high quality Geography teaching.

The school’s long term plan for Geography sets out the content of teaching within in each year group. This is supported by the school’s Geography progression document which demonstrates learning outcomes within each strand of development within a Geography unit. Short term planning details how this content is developed over a series of lessons within the unit of work.  The organisation of the Geography curriculum provides structured opportunities for pupils to:

• develop enjoyment, interest in and knowledge of geography and an appreciation of its contribution to all aspects of everyday life

• build on curiosity and sense of awe in our physical and social world

• be introduced to the language and vocabulary of geography

• develop better locational knowledge of the world’s countries, oceans and hemispheres

• connect human and physical geography; allowing children to investigate social, environmental, economic and physical aspects of the subject.

Geography Policy

Geography Curriculum

Our Award Winning Provision for Geography

Achieved - 2023
We have achieved the Geography Quality mark - Silver in September 2023. This is a prestigious award which recognises and promotes quality and progress in geography leadership, curriculum development and teaching and learning in schools, and recognises the high standard of geographical teaching and learning across our school.

The Primary Geography Quality Mark supports schools to develop a curriculum with high quality intent, implementation and impact. It raises the profile of geography across the whole school community, with parents/carers, teachers, governors and children, and provides impactful and rigorous professional development alongside external validation of the quality of our curriculum.

Geography Curriculum

Children at Masefield are passionate about Geography and our high quality, tailored curriculum provides the opportunity for children to regularly revisit and recap their knowledge and skills, enabling them to know more, remember more and apply more to each of the year group end points. The progressive curriculum specifies substantive knowledge that is to be taught including place knowledge, locational knowledge, human, physical and environmental knowledge and Geography skills.

At Masefield, our Geography curriculum inspires and teaches our children all about the diverse places, people, resources and environments around the world (substantive knowledge) giving them the opportunity to ‘think like a Geographer’ (disciplinary knowledge). To do this, we have ensured our geography curriculum teaches our pupils about the full range of localities and countries that our rich multi-cultural community at Masefield are drawn from.

We promote curiosity and fascination through engaging experiences within the classroom and through a range of visits so the children have the chance to apply their Geographical skills and understanding as well as develop long term memory.

Examples of this include: local field work, educational visitors, and exploring rivers so that our pupils are provided with experiences that will help them to develop a love of the subject. Geography at Masefield allows all pupils to take part in new and exciting adventures.

Our ambition ensures that the children gain a clear knowledge and understanding that they continue to build on and develop as they move from year group to year group. Through our dedicated Geography timetable and well planned curriculum, children will be able to see the connections between Geography and other aspects of their learning and continuously apply their knowledge and skills in new and engaging ways.

Experiences beyond the school – bringing Geography to life for our children

At Masefield, we ensure each year group has many opportunities to learn through external visitors who come into school and expose children to Geography beyond the classroom. We also provide a range of opportunities for Geographical visits and fieldwork to take place whether this be in our local area or further afield. These experiences all link to our bespoke curriculum and give our children a further insight into how their learning can be applied into a range of contexts.

Children are given the opportunity to visit new environments, meet people from around the world and put their knowledge and skills to the test in ways they may never had the opportunity to do before, and in doing so our intent is to inspire our pupils to develop their knowledge and skills as a geographer.

• In the Early Years, children begin their Geography journey through exploring environments to gain an initial understanding of the world around them.

• Year 1 continue to carry out their local fieldwork developing their map skills, and also take part in a local area fieldwork, using aerial photos to navigate the area around school. They also take a trip to Brockholes observing physical features.

• Year 2 study the seaside, observing human and physical features, they take a trip to Southport and gather information by conducting interviews to collect information about why people like to live or work in Southport.

• Year 3 have a focus on map reading and utilises their skills learnt in orienteering work. They also use their greater understanding to create their own globes.

• Year 4 take part in conducting fieldwork along the River Irwell observing and recording the movement of the river, whilst using their map work to use symbols to help locate their position.

• Year 5 use their map skills as well as videos and webcams to explore USA, Mexico and Brazil. They also take a trip to the capital city, London to identify and mark on a map the different landmarks and complete orienteering tasks.

• Year 6 take part in PGL where the children have complete orienteering tasks, map reading and other tactical games involving coordinates and identifying physical features.

• Enrichment- Key stage 2 children complete enrichment Thursday afternoons where they rotate through a geography focussed session and have the opportunity to take part in forest schools led by trained professionals within school.

Learning Environment – promoting key subject knowledge and celebrating achievement

At Masefield, we take pride in our learning environment, and ensure that they are stimulating and useful to the children in supporting their learning. Within classrooms working walls allow information to be continuously updated alongside learning – something which our Masefield Geographers love to do. They also include key vocabulary, maps, photographs of the children and examples of learning.

Assemblies – knowing more, remembering more and applying more

Geography themes are a feature of our class assemblies within school, showcasing the knowledge that the class has learnt throughout their topics. They contain performances, facts, quizzes and examples of the work the children have produced. These popular assemblies are well attended by our parent/carers.

High quality resources and texts underpinning our Geography curriculum

Geography is promoted throughout our core lessons at Masefield which means knowledge and vocabulary is consistently being revisited throughout the curriculum. We use high quality fiction and non-fiction texts to inspire our children to create high quality pieces of writing, encourage the love of reading and embed their computing skills further. These texts are chosen so that they are accessible and engaging for all children within the class.

We are extremely lucky at Masefield to have a range of fabulous resources which are used to support our learning. Each year group has access to a box full of maps, posters, texts and artefacts linked to each of their topics.