Goxhill Geography Curriculum Intent

Our primary school curriculum is carefully designed to ensure a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all pupils. The curriculum intent aims to inspire a love for learning, foster curiosity, and equip pupils with the skills and knowledge they need to flourish academically and personally. It is rooted in a deep understanding of the local community that ensures that we ‘value our past’, celebrate diversity, promote cultural capital, prepare pupils for life in modern Britain and ‘look to the future with hope’.

Commitment to our pupils is fulfilled through our high aspiration, passion and drive and is founded upon the following four key principles:

1. Unlocking children's true academic potential to ensure that they ‘flourish’.

We aim to develop confident, resilient, inquisitive, independent & knowledgeable children through the delivery of a coherent & structured enquiry based curriculum which builds on prior learning from nursery to year 6. Individuals are challenged to reach their true potential and be ready for the next stage in their education. We want our children to believe in the transformative power of change and to ‘look to the future with hope’ in their hearts.

In Geography we do this through:

• Inspiring a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people by providing a structured enquiry based curriculum that is progressive and builds upon previous learning

• Providing a Geography curriculum which ensures full coverage of the National Curriculum, develops learning and results in the acquisition of knowledge and skills (including human and physical geography and geographical and fieldwork skills) that enable children to be geographers

• Using age appropriate, relevant and specific geographical vocabulary.

• Providing opportunities to use a range of sources for geographical information including maps, diagrams, atlases, globes and digital and aerial photographs.

• Incorporating cross-curricular links in Geography, to ensure that areas of the curriculum feed into, enhance one another and join together to build a ‘bigger picture’ understanding

• Encouraging children to demonstrate their Geography knowledge and skills

• Enhancing children’s outcomes across the school

• Providing opportunities for local Geography knowledge enrichment

2. Unlocking children’s true social and emotional potential to ensure that they ‘flourish’ as unique, well-rounded individuals.

We aim to foster happy and healthy children, within a safe environment, who are given the help they need to learn, grow and achieve as much as they possibly can in an atmosphere which nourishes a healthy mind and body. We want our children to believe that each one of them holds the power to make a difference in the world through ‘doing all of the good they can.’ 

In Geography we do this through:

• British values

• Encouraging an enjoyment of Geography through promoting inquisitiveness – allowing children to investigate, ask questions and find answers about the world around them.

• Giving pupil’s a voice about Geography in school, gathering their opinions on lessons and enrichments.

• Providing a purposeful environment, including specific Geography displays/ working walls in school.

• Weekly Picture News sessions which covers news topics from around the world, providing children the opportunity to learn about the world and its people. 

• Workshops and visits that excite and intrigue our children to find out more about the world in which we live e.g. One Earth Workshop for KS1 and KS2 learning about sustainably for our planet, walks around our locality to learn about human and physical features and changes overtime. 

3. Unlocking children’s true potential to ‘flourish’ as life-long learners through raising individual expectations, self-belief and exposure to ‘opportunity’

We aim to help our children to be aware of and see ‘opportunity’ beyond their locality and starting points through exposure to the wider world. We aim to provide a broad, balanced curriculum with a wide variety of experiences which nurture the talents and interests of our children enabling them to become resilient, creative, enquiring learners and effective communicators who persevere and aspire for excellence.

In Geography we do this through:

• Providing our pupils with opportunities to build competency in geographical skills for life – information collection, analysis, communication and interpretation.

• Teaching Geography in an enjoyable and sequential way alongside other areas of the curriculum.

• Opportunities to consolidate and extend geographical knowledge and skills through trips and visits

• Ensuring pupils develop the understanding of subject specific vocabulary and are able to apply it.

• Fieldwork opportunities not just in Geography but in other cross curricula subjects 

• Equipping pupils with the geographical knowledge and skills that may help influence decisions they make in their lives.

• Arranging workshops to support and inspire curiosity about the diverse world in which we live. 

4. For our children to ‘do all of the good they can’ by broadening their horizons and developing each of them as a responsible local and global citizen. 

We want our children to appreciate their role as part of our community. We encourage them to ask questions, make informed choices and to take responsibility for the decisions they make. As a result, we hope to foster in our children an awareness of the difference they can make as local & global citizens, treating others with compassion and respect.

In Geography we do this through:

• Promoting a love and appreciation of the environment around us.

• Learning about a sense of place within our wider world.

• Planned opportunities for learning and applying geographical skills within wider contexts, including other curriculum subjects.

• Developing understanding of the wider world and the impact we as citizens have on this – building knowledge on how we can act as responsible citizens within our local and global communities.

• Establishing links with local places for the use of fieldwork e.g. local churches (cross curricula link to RE).

• National Community – residential trips, what we learn from other countries (past and present), picture news sessions. 

• Local community and Geography links – Local geography such as walks around the locality identify human and physical features and changes to the environment, population etc. over time (links to farming and the industrial revolution)

• Through following MTP enquiry questions - linking understanding, context and experience to consider responses in relation to ‘big questions’ which form part of each unit. How has our school/ locality changed over time? 

Geography Curriculum Intent Map

[pdf 634KB]