Geography
“A high-quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives”. DFE
Intent
At Benton Dene we shape our geography curriculum to ensure it is fully inclusive to every child. Our aims are to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Geography; providing a broad, balanced and differentiated curriculum; ensuring the progressive development of geographical concepts, knowledge and skills; and for the children to develop a love for geography, not just through experiences in the classroom, but also with the use of fieldwork and educational visits.
Implementation
In ensuring high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as a half-termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. At Benton Dene, we believe that geography is key to developing a child’s understanding of where they live within the world and how our world looks and is changing. We feel it is important to enable all children to gain ‘real-life’ experiences within their world and to use their geographical skills. For example, using the local area to follow maps in Key Stage 1, to creating sketch maps in Lower Key Stage 2, through to investigating Fantastic Forest in Upper Key Stage 2. Our teaching equips pupils with knowledge about places and people; resources in the environment; physical and human processes; formation and use of landscapes. We also want children to develop geographical skills: collecting and analysing data; using maps, globes, aerial photographs and digital mapping to name and identify countries, continents and oceans; and communicating information in a variety of ways.
Impact
Through the geography curriculum delivered at Benton Dene, we strive to create a supportive and collaborative ethos for learning by providing investigative and enquiry based learning opportunities. We aim for our children to develop a greater understanding of their immediate locality as well as an understanding that we live in one small part of the world , a world which is diverse in terms of both people and places. Children will leave our school with an understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how this affects landscapes and environments. It is our aim that the geography curriculum taught at Benton Dene equips children with key knowledge and skills, as set out in the National Curriculum, but also with a sense of awareness of themselves as people within a wide world and the impact that they, as people, can have upon the world in which they live.
