Geography

Geography Leads - Miss Whiteside and Mr Young

Geography Subject Statement

At St Margaret’s, we aim to expand geographical vocabulary, increase our children’s knowledge and curiosity of the wider world and promote high aspirations. The curriculum is designed to ensure that teaching equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth's key physical and human processes. It allows children to develop and demonstrate a range of geographical skills, enabling them to make comparisons and links within their substantive knowledge; pupils are provided with rich curriculum enhancements through trips, workshops and geographical experiences. Through our geography curriculum, we aim to produce well- rounded individuals by providing our children with opportunities to expand their cultural capital and experiences of the world.

Our Geography Curriculum is designed to give pupils a broad and detailed knowledge of people
and places from around the world.

It purposefully blends a focus on place with the exploration of key geographical concepts,
drawing on examples at local, national and international level throughout.

The knowledge of the curriculum is broken down into seven key strands:

Substantive Knowledge

Knowledge of Physical Geography
Knowledge of Human Geography
Locational and Place Knowledge at three scales: Local, National & Global

Disciplinary Knowledge

Understanding places and connections
Map and atlas skills
Geographical skills
Fieldwork

What's the difference between substantive and disciplinary knowledge in geography?

Substantive knowledge includes factual knowledge of the world around us (e.g. locational knowledge of places); as well as knowledge about geographical phenomena (e.g. physical processes and economic systems). Substantive knowledge is established fact that is not open to debate.

In terms of disciplinary knowledge, the curriculum is designed to allow pupils to see that geography is a dynamic subject where thinking and viewpoints change. In developing pupils’ disciplinary knowledge, teachers’ plans allow pupils to:

take a holistic view of the content studied
establish whether the geographical questions posed, the methods used, and the answers found are valid
recognise the interconnectedness of different geographical content, appreciate what it means to be a geographer by asking geographical questions such as ‘why is this place like this?’, ‘how is this place changing?’ and ‘how are other places affected?

Disciplinary knowledge ensures that pupils appreciate the context in which substantive knowledge was generated. This helps pupils to appreciate context and the perspective from which knowledge was created, different standpoints and how views have changed as time has moved on.

The Early Years and Key Stage 1 programme is designed to start with children’s immediate
locality and gradually move outwards. considering in turn: a wider local area, contrasting areas
within England, the United Kingdom, a contrasting world place and then the wider
world and its continents, oceans and countries.

At Key Stage 2 children build on these fundamental ideas to study specific regions and
countries in depth from the UK, Europe and the Americas. They also learn about big
geographical ideas including settlement, biomes, latitude, longitude, water & rivers, natural disasters and sustainability & climate change.