Cavendish Primary School

'High quality geography provision, by its fundamental nature (learning about the world), intrinsically links to and enhances all areas of learning whether mental, social or emotional. In turn effective geographical learning only happens in conjunction with its own intricacies and those of other disciplines.

Thinking geographically offers a uniquely powerful way of seeing the world and makes connections between scales, from the local to the global. We need facts in order to think, but we also need concepts to enable us to group bits of information, or facts, together. The three main organising concepts of geography are frequently said to be place, space and environment.'

The Cavendish Geography curriculum supports children to use and understand these concepts to answer different geographical questions, acquire relevant key knowledge and carry out enquiries with curiosity. Supported by the Primary Knowledge Curriculum, we scaffold learning and experience to ensure our education is equitable with high expectations for all of our children. Our curriculum is specific to the disciplines of the subject, well sequenced and ambitious. A knowledge-rich curriculum ensures that each precious moment of our taught lessons will support children in acquiring the knowledge, skills and cultural capital that they will need to become well-educated, informed, citizens of the future.

Implementation

We teach geography as a discrete subject tailoring the Primary Knowledge Curriculum to the needs of our school, our location and geography of our local area. Our geography curriculum helps pupils build powerful knowledge of the world. Through our carefully sequenced curriculum, children build knowledge over time, knowing more and remembering more as they work through the curriculum.

Conceptual understanding is at the heart of the PKC curriculum and children will learn about key geographical concepts including place, space, the environment, and how the world around them is interconnected.

Throughout the curriculum, children will consider how we know about the world, what geographers do, what they look for, and how they may interpret their observations. By answering questions such as ‘what would a geographer say about this place?’, we encourage children to think about the discipline of geography and how knowledge is formed.

Pupils following the PKC will have many opportunities to make interesting and complex connections between what they study in geography and other subjects such as history and science. The knowledge-rich approach to a primary geography curriculum supports children to understand the world around them, to think deeply about global issues and to develop their own sense of identity; knowing who they are and equipping them with the power to determine their futures.

Geography learning is based around: space, place and scale wherever possible to ensure that content is relevant and identifies change (a key concept within the subject). The children develop their knowledge and skills of space, place and scale through a unit in each year group specifically designed to achieve this, Spatial Sense. Fieldwork is a hugely valuable aspect of geography that helps to motivate and inspire pupils, which in turn raises standards of attainment. Enquiries and thinking geographically help children to engage purposeful learning.

Cavendish serves a multicultural, diverse community and our children develop a sense of place locally, regionally, nationally and globally. We embrace our location by the River Thames in West London to ensure that our children have an understanding of London's geographical features and undertake fieldwork locally. Our curriculum utilises our location and opportunities available in the capital city.

Knowledge organisers are used for each unit of work. These are referred to throughout the unit to aide learning and remembering.

Impact

develop geographical knowledge, thinking and skills
have a love for learning.

GSO Test

Geography

Intent

Implementation

Impact