Geography Intent

“The study of geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It's about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exist across continents. And in the end, it's about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.” Barack Obama

Our Intent

The Geography curriculum at SS Peter and Paul provides children with the opportunity to learn about diverse places and create a sense of curiosity and fascination about the world around them. It is essential to equip children with knowledge and understanding about the following: the location of globally significant places, both terrestrial and marine and to understand the processes that give importance to the key human and physical features of our world. The need to understand the natural and human environment, human and physical processes and relevant issues such as climate change are also vital in building a rounded view of the world around them. 

The curriculum has been designed to reflect pupil heritage and support children in making links between the different nationalities and cultures that make up our school community. 

As geographers at SS Peter and Paul, the children will also be equipped with key skills that progress throughout the key stage involving the geographical study of sources (maps, globes, geographical information systems, aerial photographs),fieldwork and map work.  To ensure that the children develop a secure knowledge, we ensure that the topics contain wide ranging and engaging content with progressive skills. Through this intent we aim for the children’s inspiration and interest in Geography to be built upon engaging activities, key lines of enquiry and memorisation of interesting and important facts.

Our  Implementation 

Geography is a well loved, promoted and celebrated subject in our school which is taught discretely but with a cross curricular thematic approach. We have a bespoke planning scheme which provides depth, quality and variety to give ample opportunities for children to develop their skills. We teach Geography in units often linked to our core texts or science units of work. 

To further support the children in the development of mapping skills, we use an online mapping system (digimaps) which allows children to access maps of varied sizes and scales. We are making an increasing use of local geographical sites of interest to further enrich our children’s knowledge, understanding and fieldwork skills. 

We have initiatives in our school to reuse, reduce and recycle as we seek to lower our carbon footprint and contribute towards a cleaner, greener local area and world. Our School Eco Warriors are determined to ensure that all children in our school community play their part in making SS Peter and Paul as sustainable and environmentally friendly as possible. These children then decide which class receives our weekly ECO award in celebration assemblies for the work they have done to protect our world.

Our  Impact

Our geography curriculum equips our learners with a variety of knowledge and skills which are then assessed at the end of each unit that is taught. Children are given the opportunity to explain and discuss what they have learned throughout the unit and complete quiz assessments to ascertain how much knowledge has been retained. As a collective, the class also navigates through the key vocabulary at the heart of the unit they have studied to unpick any concepts and ideas that children are yet to fully understand. By doing this, we ensure that children’s knowledge and understanding is as comprehensive as possible.

"As stewards of God's creation, we are called to make the earth a beautiful garden for the human family. When we destroy our forests, ravage our soil and pollute our seas, we betray that noble calling." Pope Francis

Geography at SS Peter and Paul

The areas of study in Geography for KS1 and KS2 can be seen below. 

We follow the National Curriculum Programme of Study for Geography. This can be viewed here.