Geography

Geography is the study of our world and covers the study of people (human geography), environments (physical geography) and how they interact. It helps us understand the world we live in by learning about different features of our planet and how they work, form and change.

At Portfield Primary Academy, we believe that learning about geography is important for many reasons. Firstly, it helps children develop their sense of place within the world, starting with their local area then expanding to include more distant and diverse locations. Children will learn to ‘think like a geographer’ by applying their knowledge of their local area to help them understand different places.

Secondly, learning about the variety and importance of different environments aims to foster an appreciation for the people and places of our world. Teaching children about their role within the world aims to develop them into global citizens who are equipped with knowledge about how to care for their planet and the people who live on it.

Finally, children will learn to understand places by interpreting sources including maps, data and photographs. Learning about how places are recorded using maps will help children to orient themselves and move within a space, while interpreting data and photographs will help them to recognise the features and processes of a location.

We believe that learning about geography is a vital part of a well-rounded education and we are committed to providing a rich and engaging geography curriculum that will inspire our pupils to develop a love of learning about our world.

Content & Sequencing of Curriculum Content

Our geography curriculum contains coverage of the full subject content from the Geography National Curriculum Programme of Study. This content has been sequenced in a way that ensures that pupils encounter new learning in a useful order.

For example, pupils in Year 1 and 2 begin by learning about their local area in the topic ‘Our Home - Chichester’ before expanding to learn about the countries, cities and seas of their nation in the unit ‘The United Kingdom’. Once they understand how the United Kingdom is made up, they can learn to describe and locate weather patterns in the UK and then look more widely at hot and cold areas of our planet in the ‘Weather’ topic. This approach aims to help pupils develop a foundation of knowledge about their local area upon which to build knowledge about their national area before expanding to explore the wider world.

This baseline knowledge of our local area and the wider world is then expanded on as pupils progress through the school to study case studies of specific locations, such as ‘Normandy, France’ in Years 5 and 6, and processes such as ‘Natural Disasters’ in Years 3 and 4.

Concepts within the Geography Curriculum

Knowledge in geography can be thought about as substantive (core facts in geography) and disciplinary (how to ‘think like a geographer’). When ‘thinking like a geographer’, there are four key concepts that all of the substantive (facts) knowledge fits into. These are:

These key concepts are very broad and abstract. To help the children understand them, they will learn about smaller ideas that are connected to them. For example, the key concept place can be formed in our memories by first understanding smaller ideas such as home, country, climate, culture etc. 

As pupils remember more about these smaller ideas, they start to build a web of connected ideas in their memory. In other words, they start to see how these smaller ideas are linked which helps them understand the bigger concept. These connected 'webs' are often called schemas within the world of cognitive (brain) science.

In geography, there are common themes that apply to all of the key concepts. These are called ‘organising concepts’ because they can help to organise the children’s thinking about the key concepts. There are five organising concepts:

These concepts overlap and work together so that each key concept can be understood using the organising concepts. 

For example, the key concept ‘place’ can be thought about using the organising concept ‘diversity’ to understand that ‘all places have some features that are the same and some that are different’. This can be applied to a context, such as comparing Portsmouth and Apia, to say that both places have a coastline but Apia has coral reefs and Portsmouth does not. 

At Portfield, all knowledge in our geography curriculum falls under one of the key concepts, is understood using the organising concepts and is applied to a context which helps the children build strong webs of ideas about our world.

Geography Content Sequencing
Substantive Concept Sequencing
Organising Concept Sequencing

Retrieval Practice

Retrieval practice is a learning strategy that involves actively recalling information from memory. At Portfield, retrieval practice is an essential part of our geography curriculum design, with pupils regularly recalling information from intervals in the past (e.g. last lesson, last term, last year). Retrieval practice can take many forms, such as having pupils answer questions about previously taught material, taking practice quizzes or writing short summaries of what they have learned.

The goal of retrieval practice is to strengthen students' memories of taught material, making it more likely that they will be able to recall it easily later on.