Geography
Intent:
Be the best we can be now and in our futures: to have a strong understanding of their place in the world, from their local community to the wider global landscape
Ambition for all: ensuring that no child’s circumstances define their outcomes: we ensure every pupil can contribute, succeed and feel proud of their learning, developing as confident, curious, and responsible geographers
Nurture a healthy mind, body and soul: nurturing children’s sense of wonder, belonging and take pride in the world they belong to
Develop a crew mentality for our school, the Rock Ferry community and our world: to develop a strong sense of shared responsibility, helping children understand that their actions matter locally, nationally and globally
Implement:
To put our intent into action, we plan at three levels: long-term, medium-term, short-term. We use CUSP scheme in Y1 – Y6 to support the subject knowledge of our subject leader and class teachers at each stage of planning:
Long-Term: Our subject leader maps out what children should learn in each unit throughout school. This is mapped out by our subject leader because they see the bigger picture of Geography across the school, ensuring your child is taught everything required of the Early Years Framework and National Curriculum. In Early Years, early foundations for Geography are taught within the Understanding the World area of Development Matters.
Our subject leader carefully considers the order content is taught across school so that what your child learns makes sense year on year. We deliberately plan opportunities to return to key ideas throughout your child’s time at Rock Ferry so your child can build lasting memory and deepen their understanding each time they return to a key concept.
Medium-Term: Teachers use the long-term plan to know what they need to teach. At the medium-term planning phase, they carefully consider the sequence of learning within a unit of work so that knowledge builds logically and gives children opportunity to return to ideas, apply them and refine their understanding.
Short-Term: Your child’s teacher plans each lesson for the learning sequence, considering how best to teach the content set out in the long-term and medium-term plans so that it sticks. When planning lessons, your child’s class teacher will consider the needs of your child and the class they are in. This may mean returning to ideas they have struggled to grasp in earlier lessons or putting adaptations in place to ensure everyone can access the lesson such as word banks, writing slopes and scaffolded responses.
Impact:
To ensure children have learned what we have intended them to, teachers regularly plan small tasks within lessons that lets them see what your child has understood. This allows them to respond to your child’s need if they haven’t understood a key idea. This may be offering support or re-teaching within the lesson or adapting the following lesson plans to address bigger misconceptions.
Subject leaders and senior leaders regularly speak to children to see what they have remembered, look in their books to check the quality of their work and visit lessons. We use this information to review the quality of our curriculum and identify any areas where we could make it even better.