Intent, implementation, and impact Statement:  Geography at Bitterley CofE Primary School

At Bitterley, we encourage pupils ‘to be courageous, strong and do everything in love.’

The importance of understanding that each of us is rooted in love is not under-estimated at Bitterley.

‘Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’  Corinthians 13:7 Trusting in love gives us the courage to be ourselves. Courage is from the Latin ‘coeur’ which means ‘To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart’. Our intention is for our pupils to leave Bitterley prepared for ‘Life in all its fullness’ and ready to tell their own stories.

Our Christian vision has driven us to create a bespoke curriculum for our pupils that pursues the acquisition of wisdom, knowledge and skills alongside educating for aspiration, dignity, and respect. It is also our intention to nurture a sense of community, so that all members of our school develop a deep sense of belonging, both locally and within the wider world. We believe that these attributes will support our pupils to live well together and flourish, as they move on to High School and beyond.

Our curriculum offer is therefore divided into three focus areas: ‘Courage, strength and love’:

Courageous – Living wholeheartedly. Using the knowledge and skills in our curriculum to choose our own path free from stereotyping; being curious, aspirational. Speaking out for those who do not have a voice. 

Strength – Having a growth mindset, developing resilience, being able to persevere to achieve our goals to create a confident well-rounded citizen in our diverse world.

Love – Embracing our neighbours, developing a greater awareness of the challenge’s others face in life and how we can make a difference in our school community, local community and further afield.  Through the curriculum we develop pupils understanding of challenges locally and globally. We teach pupils to listen with respect.

At Bitterley CofE Primary School, we believe that a carefully sequenced curriculum can empower our pupils and reduce social inequality, whilst providing the knowledge they need for the next stage of their education and beyond. We view our curriculum as a spiral: the mapped-out journey of concept building leading to a change in long term memory and an increase in knowledge. Through progressive concepts throughout the curriculum, the children will develop a deep and rich understanding, meaning that the knowledge and skills that are acquired are more likely to be remembered. Our curriculum sets out WHAT will be learned and WHEN it will be learned. We understand that cultural capital is the essential knowledge that children need to prepare them for their future success. Through our curriculum we provide different experiences and opportunities to support the accumulation of knowledge, behaviours, and skills that a child gains over time

Intent

The Intention of the Geography curriculum at Bitterley School is to inspire pupils to become curious and explorative thinkers with a diverse knowledge of the world that we live in, its people and environments; in other words, to think like a geographer. We want pupils to develop the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in various ways, and analyse and present their findings. Through our carefully planned curriculum, we aim to build an awareness of how Geography shapes our lives at multiple scales and over time. We hope to encourage pupils to become resourceful, active citizens who will have the skills to contribute to and improve the world around them.

Building and expanding children’s personal experiences of geography is recognised in research as highly influential when children are learning geography. Many researchers note that the concept of building from what is known or familiar to pupils gives them security in their understanding and so helps them commit knowledge to their long-term memory. It is also important that children gain knowledge about the world beyond their own experience, for example to appreciate how people live in other parts of the world. However, children must still be able to relate this to what they already know if they are to build a strong schema (a cognitive structure that connects knowledge previously learned). This helps them to build, connect and remember different aspects of the curriculum in the long term.

To support this our curriculum was chosen to build on pupils’ prior learning and to re-visit the content, which supports pupils in developing strong schemata. It organises and repeats substantive and disciplinary knowledge in ways that show pupils how each component fits together and how each composite idea fits with others. Through this, children gain a secure grasp of well-connected pieces of knowledge and consequently know more, remember more and are able to do more, thus making good progress in the subject.

We recognised that building pupils’ knowledge of locations, or ‘where’s where’, helps them build theirown identity and sense of place and allows them to develop an appreciation of distance and scale.
This is built upon as the children progress through the curriculum so that they gain the knowledge they need to develop an increasingly complex understanding of place. This helps them make a connection between location and geographical processes and personal experience.

To ensure this is rationale is followed we have chosen to follow the Kapow Geography scheme of work which encourages:

• A strong focus on developing both geographical skills and knowledge.

• Critical thinking, with the ability to ask perceptive questions and explain and analyse evidence.

• The development of fieldwork skills across each year group.

• A deep interest and knowledge of pupils’ locality and how it differs from other areas of the world.

A growing understanding of geographical terms and vocabulary.

Our Geography curriculum enables pupils to meet the end of key stage attainment targets in the National curriculum. The aims also align with those in the National curriculum.