Geography intent statement. Mar 2024

Intent

Geography promotes children's moral, social and cultural development, helping them to have a greater understanding of their place in the world, their rights and their responsibilities to other people and to the environment.

Through teaching Geography, we can also develop children's spiritual development. Essentially, Geography is about studying people, where they live, where they don’t live and our relationship with the environment and all living things. This involves providing children with the appropriate moments to reflect on their own values and beliefs and those of others. It is an opportunity to understand the formation of our planet, where natural resources come from and why landscapes are unique or similar. How, in the face of adversity, our planet continues to thrive, yet changes are necessary to cope with the impact that our actions have on the natural world.

Implementation

Through our Harmony Project, we make links between Geography other subjects, so that it can be adapted to easily slotted in at relevant and continual moments. We believe the principles of nature are universal and transferable, how history affects nature and how nature is affected by history; how the Earth can be harnessed by science and how science helps our understanding of the world. We encourage our pupils identify connections between the principles of nature and how they are relevant to our local environment and the whole world. We hope that, through this, we reinforce the idea of a global community and our responsibilities to appreciate, protect and sustain our planet and all living things from future destruction and degradation, preserving what is precious and unique to each area. The geography we teach is incorporated into transferable themes, such as biodiversity and sustainability and how these link to international industries and production. We teach our pupils to understand and appreciate how and why places are different, by understanding different climates, time zones and physical localities.

Through history, we hope that our pupils understand changes over time and how harnessing changes to the planet has enabled humankind to develop and progress. We encourage links with science and maths to explore and measure our use of energy and how this affects the planet, encouraging children to ask questions, explore, explain and/or justify the human impact on the environment and consider ways of reversing damage to the planet.

Impact

Outcomes in topic and literacy books evidence a broad and balanced Geography curriculum and demonstrate children’s acquisition of identified key knowledge and skills. The skills taught are progressively throughout the school, so that children are able to understand and explore aspects of the physical world (eg through map reading and data collection). In each key stage our pupils are taught locational knowledge, place knowledge and human and physical geography.  This is in addition to the development and application of key skills, supported by fieldwork.