'A high quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.'

Intent:

At Palmarsh we want the our Geography education inspire pupils to work and think like geographers. We want them to be curious and explorative thinkers who progress to having a diverse knowledge of the world. We want our pupils to have the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in various ways, and analyse and present their findings. We want the pupils at Palmarsh to recognise how Geography shapes our lives at multiple scales and over time. We hope to encourage pupils to become resourceful, active citizens who will have the skills to contribute to and improve the world around them.

Implementation:

. The Geography curriculum we use at Palmarsh is a spiral curriculum, with knowledge and skills revisited throughout the year groups with increasing complexity. This allows pupils to revisit and build on previous learning. There is clear progression of knowledge and skills across year groups with the four National Curriculum strands; Locational Knowledge, Place Knowledge, Human and physical geography and Geographical skills and fieldwork. The learning is centered around a central, open-ended question that is then answered through the children's application of the skills taught. The skills and knowledge are taught using a range of strategies including independent and group tasks to encourage collaborative working with practical, hands-on and computer based tasks. Opportunities for fieldwork are present throughout so that these skills can be practiced regularly . We ensure that we make the best use of our school grounds as well as the wider community for larger-scale visits to observe both human and physical geography. Geography is timetabled to be taught once a week in alternate terms with History. This allows teachers to complete the full range of lessons and therefore ensure the children are fully equipped to answer the enquiry styled question for each unit of work.

Impact

An enquiry-based approach allows our teachers to assess through both summative and formative means. Learning intentions and success criteria allow teachers to assess individuals and identify gaps that can and need to be filled. End of unit quizzes provide an overall view of what the pupil's have learnt, whilst regular strategies for retrieval are employed to further embed knowledge and provide the pupils with the opportunities to share. We want our children to leave Palmarsh equipped with a broad range of knowledge and skills to help them further study geography at Key Stage 3. We want the children to be curious and inspired geographers who recognise the connections between the human and physical elements of geography. 

Please see class pages for more detail of curriculum coverage.