Geography

Intent

The Palm Bay Geography curriculum provides a broad, balanced, and inclusive education that meets the needs of all pupils and prepares them for the next stages of their lives. The keys aims of our Geography curriculum are to:

Foster inquisitive minds and deepen understanding of the world.
Instil curiosity about different cultures and environments.
Inspire love for exploring the world and respect for the environment.
Develop essential geographical skills for global citizenship.

Implementation

At Palm Bay we follow the CUSP Curriculum for Geography. Using this scheme ensures fidelity to the teaching approach and delivery. The CUSP curriculum focuses on the core objectives for each year group and then revisits and builds on these throughout a child’s academic career - this ensures knowledge and skills are more embedded. The curriculum also includes the explicit teaching of key vocabulary, which allows all children to access the learning. We ensure that all learners are able to thrive using adapted content and scaffolds where necessary. The whole school curriculum is a spiral curriculum that revisits concepts and topics, each time extending knowledge, deepening understanding and developing skills. Our teaching and learning is focused on providing opportunities for children to develop their understanding of the world while becoming ‘more expert’ with each unit of study. The children also have an opportunity to engage in a wide range of enrichment activities including beach school, forest school, map work skills and eco-school activities. This is illustrated in the whole school overview:

The table below shows what each year group covers:

	Autumn Term	Spring Term	Summer Term	Map Work Week
Year 1	Continents and oceans / countries and capital cities of the United Kingdom	Hot and cold locations	Revisiting continents, oceans, UK countries, capital cities and seas	Mapping and fieldwork (what is a map?)
Year 2	Human and physical geography in the local area	Human and physical geography of a small area in the UK and of a contrasting non-European country (Yanomami)	Human and physical geography of a small area in the UK and of a contrasting non-European country (London and Nairobi)	Mapping and fieldwork (identifying human and physical features on a map)
Year 3	Counties and regions of the United Kingdom	Fieldwork and Map Skills	Revisiting countries, counties and regions of the United Kingdom	OS map skills and fieldwork (including scale)
Year 4	Rivers	Longitude and latitude	Water cycle	Map skills (environmental regions of Europe, Russia, North and South America)
Year 5	The location of countries of the world, including biomes	Map skills – four and six figure grid references	Revisiting locations and biomes	OS map skills and fieldwork (including grid references and contour lines)
Year 6	Study and compare places: region in the UK, Europe and North America	Study physical processes: earthquakes, mountains and volcanoes	Study human geography – economic, settlements and trade links	Orienteering map skills and navigation

Impact

Children demonstrate a love for learning, engagement and enjoyment of Geography
New learning is built upon and linked to previous knowledge
Children are encouraged to engage in deeper thinking, through high-quality questioning
Pupils gain independence in their learning and develop new skills
Pupils are able to apply learning to real-life situations