Geography plays a crucial role in understanding our world.

At Southroyd, our Geography curriculum is designed to ignite children’s curiosity and interest in the world and its people. We aim to equip pupils with knowledge about the diversity of our world – its places, people, and resources – and an understanding of the interaction between human and physical processes.

Geography engages with children’s fundamental curiosity:

Identity: Who am I? Where do I come from? Who is my family? What is my ‘story’? Who are the people around me? Where do they come from? What is their ‘story’?

Place in the world: Where do I live? How does it look? How do I feel about it? How is it changing? How do I want it to change? Can I influence this?

The physical world: What is the world (and this place) made of? Why do things move? What becomes of things?

Human environment: Who decides who gets what, where and why? What is fair? Who decides? How do we handle differences of opinion?

Through their work in geography, children learn about their local area, and they compare their life in this area with that in other regions in the United Kingdom and in the rest of the world. They learn how to draw and interpret maps, and they develop the skills of research, investigation, analysis and problem-solving.

Links to learning, quizzes, maps and more

Ordnance Survey Mapzone: You'll find games, trivia quizzes and help with map skills, plus you can delve into some fascinating topics about the world around us.

Barnaby Bear: Explore the world with Barnaby Bear! Suitable for children in Reception and KS1.

BBC Bitesize KS2 Geography: Videos and quizzes covering geographical skills, people and places, the natural world, human geography and sustainability.

BBC Teach - Your World: This series of videos compares the experiences of children living in the UK to contrasting places around the world.

World Geography Games: Challenge yourself! This website has loads of quizzes to test your knowledge of capital cities, continents, mountains, rivers and many more topics.

National Geographic Kids: Find amazing facts about animals, science, history and geography, along with fun competitions, games and more.

Dollar Street: This website lets you visit homes all around the world to find out what life is like in different places and on different incomes. Adult supervision needed to get the most out of this site.

NLS Maps: This National Library of Scotland site lets you look at a whole range of different maps including historic maps, without the need to register.

Intent, implementation and impact of Geography at Southroyd

Intent

Geography is all about understanding the world we live in and our own locality. Our geography curriculum encourages children to think and provide answers to questions about the natural and human aspects of the world. At Southroyd, children are encouraged to develop a greater understanding and knowledge of the world, as well as their place in it from Early Years to Year 6. Our curriculum enables learners to develop their subject knowledge and skills in order to think carefully and purposefully about the world around us. Our intent is to inspire curiosity and fascination for our world and the diverse people within it; to promote the children's interest and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a rich understanding of the Earth's key physical and human processes.

Implementation

Our geography curriculum is shaped by our school vision which aims to enable all children to succeed and to create active citizens ready for life and not just for high school. Our curriculum ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately for maximum impact on all children. We aim to make learning as real and relevant as possible for our children by starting with our sense of place in Early years and building on this by exploring local, regional and national areas as well as referencing this with our place on Earth. Children revisit sticky knowledge through different years to build fluency and revisit key geographical terms and learning. Our lessons, content and tasks are designed to provide appropriate challenge to all learners. Cross curricular links with geography are planned for to enable our approach to layered learning. The local area is utilised to achieve the desired outcomes with opportunities for learning outside the classroom embedded in practice.

How has Pudsey changed?

Compare these Ordnance Survey maps from 2020, 1950 and 1890. How has the settlement size changed? How has the transport network changed? Can you identify different human and physical features?

What does the Ordnance Survey map show?

Compare the map with the aerial view. How are different human and physical features represented on the map?

Useful Documents

Progression for Geography at Southroyd

Primary National Curriculum: Geography

Top tips to help your child be a brilliant Geographer!

What does Geography look like at Southroyd?

Year 6 pupils reading OS maps on Pen-y-ghent, to triangulate between images seen on GIS systems (Google Earth / DigiMaps) and reality in the field.