Geography

Geography Intent

At St James’ Catholic Primary School, our geography curriculum inspires pupils’ curiosity and fascination about the world and the people who live in it. The programme of study explores diverse places across the globe covering the world’s continents, rivers and mountains. Pupils develop their positional and locational knowledge of globally significant places including Europe, America, China, India, Australia and Africa defining each country’s physical and human characteristics and the interaction between them. During their studies pupils are given opportunities to collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes.

Spatial sense is at the heart of our geography curriculum and is built upon and developed each year.  In KS1, children develop and acquire mapping skills: identifying continents, countries and cities on different types of maps, drawing maps and identifying key features on maps and globes. This work is further developed in KS2 where pupils work with compass directions and grid references. Pupils develop their understanding of scales and of global features such as hemispheres, tropics, latitude, longitude and time zones. The spatial sense programme develops understanding of physical and human geography both locally and globally and how these are interdependent and change over time. By the time children enter Upper KS2, they are ready to tackle issues of economic, political and social globalisation and its fairness and impact on the distribution of wealth and poverty across the world.

Our geography curriculum is designed so that learning is cumulative. Layer upon layer of knowledge is built up to ensure children gain sufficient cultural capital to underpin and support the future retention of learning in KS3.