Geography is taught at Selby Community Primary School to ensure that children are rooted in an understanding of Selby, The United Kingdom and The World as a whole. An understanding of the diverse range of people and cultures that make up this country is crucial for the future of our society.
As Barack Obama says ‘The study of geography is about more than just memorizing places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.’
Geography is challenging, awe inspiring, relevant and fun. By studying a diverse Geography curriculum, our children discover all about their world, from the immediate locality to distant, exotic places. In a diverse and ever changing world, it is important that children understand what their world and its people are like. In addition, learning how our world has changed over time, and how it may change in the future is crucial to understanding how to be responsible citizens of the world.
At Selby Community Primary School we teach the following key concepts across all year groups, showing a strong progression of skills:
Place
All pupils should have a sense of place. In short, this means they learn about places; what is it like there? How has it changed over time? They will ask and answer questions and compare similarities and differences in contrasting places. The places they will investigate will range from the immediate locality of their home and school, to destinations in the wider world.
Location
All pupils will use maps and atlases to locate cities, countries and continents in the World. They will locate important human and physical features of the world, and learn about the significance of features such as the Equator, the tropics, time zones and weather patterns. They will learn that topographical features such as rivers and mountains have changed over time
Human and Physical Geography
All pupils will be able to describe and understand the differences between human and physical features. Older pupils will investigate how human actions can affect natural geographical features. For example, pollution, farming, trade and development and how this affects climate, weather and ecological systems.
Fieldwork and Geographical skills
All pupils will confidently read maps, globes, atlases and digital mapping resources to locate the UK and places in the wider world. They will be confident users of OS maps and aerial photographs to identify places and features. Using the local area, they will experience learning outside of the classroom, by measuring, recording and presenting human and physical features of their area in a variety of different ways.
At the heart of our Geography provision is providing excellent opportunities; both in the classroom and in the surrounding area. As well as a creative and high quality day-to-day teaching, we use school visits and visitors to school to further enhance the learning experiences of our pupils.
All pupils should have the opportunity to exceed and demonstrate “mastery” of these concepts. At Selby CP, we consider “mastery” to be the ability to apply and explain Geographical concepts to a greater depth.
To find the Year group expectations and vocabulary lists for each subject- click here.