Here at Amberley, we are passionate about providing an engaging and inspirational Geography curriculum that celebrates the wonders of our locality as well as the wider world. On the other hand, our children are growing up in a time of climate change and will be exposed to reports and discussions of changes happening and world initiatives. Through our curriculum, we strive to provide children with the knowledge and vocabulary to navigate this beautiful and ever changing world and understand their place in it and positively influence their thinking and actions into adult life.

On our subject page, you will find our Amberley Geography curriculum as well as information about what is being taught in each year group.

Geography at Amberley

Curriculum Intent

At Amberley Primary School, we believe that Geography helps to provoke and answer questions about the natural and human worlds, encouraging children to develop a greater understanding of their world and their place in it. It helps to develop a range of investigation and problem-solving skills that are transferable to other curriculum areas and which can be used to promote children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural development along with our school values of collaboration, empathy, inspiration and excellence.  Geography is, by nature an investigative subject, which develops an understanding of concepts, knowledge and skills. We seek to inspire in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people which will remain with them for the rest of their lives; to promote children’s interest and understanding about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

As detailed in our overall curriculum intent, the teaching of Geography at Amberley embraces all three of our core values: nurturing, innovation and aspiration. By focusing on these three key priorities at the heart of our curriculum we believe our children will be ready to meet the next stages of their education.

Curriculum Implementation

Our Geography curriculum and lessons will be highly effective by ensuring we implement Geography in the follow ways:

 We will teach a rich variety of topics and issues and use this teaching to encourage and enthuse our children. We will build on a wide range of geographical skills, including:

Geographical enquiry – children ask questions and collect information, express conclusions, arguments and develop a sense of curiosity of the world around them.

Fieldwork – giving children the chance to experience such things as landscape features, busy urban streets and explorations of their local environment. Giving pupils opportunities to develop subject knowledge, and gain a range of skills that are difficult to develop in the classroom alone.

Graphicacy – use of atlases and globes, (aerial) photographs, map work and ICT to select, interpret, investigate, refine and present information.

Geographical communication- use appropriate geographical vocabulary and conventions in both speech and writing.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) follows the ‘Development Matters in the EYFS’ guidance which aims for all children in Reception to have an ‘Understanding of the World; people and communities, the world and technology’ by the end of the academic year.

Teachers within key stages plan together to create engaging and informative teaching and learning opportunities which take into account prior learning and plan for progression in skills.

Curriculum Impact

Within geography, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. Emphasis is placed on investigative learning opportunities to help children gain a coherent knowledge of understanding of each unit of work covered throughout the school. Children will deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environment.

Assessment in Geography

In Geography, we use a range of data to assess children's attainment at the end of the year. We take into account interactions with pupils during discussions in lessons and their ability to remember this knowledge and build upon it as they progress through the year. We also look at the work pupils produce in their books, including whether they are accessing scaffolds and the depths of their answers in 'Thinking like a Geographer' questions. These questions are designed for children to explain their knowledge in a given task, question or real life scenario. These answers enable us to assess the depths of their knowledge. We also assess the pupils' performance in 3 post unit assessments per year.  We use all of these things to give a 'best fit' of the child and their performance to assess them as significantly below ARE, below ARE, just at ARE, securely at ARE, above ARE or significantly above ARE.