Geography Curriculum

Intent

At Parkside Community Primary School, our geography curriculum nurtures curious, confident pupils who develop a secure sense of place, an understanding of the world and its people, and the skills to explore how environments are shaped, interconnected and changed over time. Rooted in our vision of “Nurturing and Inspiring Young Minds Toward a Bright Future”, geography teaching develops progressively sequenced locational knowledge, place knowledge, understanding of human and physical processes, and key geographical skills so that every pupil, whatever their starting point, can think geographically and act responsibly as a citizen of the world. 

We intend that by the end of their time at Parkside pupils will:

• Know a carefully chosen body of substantive geographical knowledge about the world, the United Kingdom, their locality and contrasting places, including key human and physical features, significant locations, environments and resources. 

• Build and apply a progressive set of geographical skills, in line with the National Curriculum: using maps, atlases, globes and digital mapping; interpreting aerial photographs, diagrams and data; using compass directions, grid references, symbols and keys; collecting, measuring, recording, analysing and presenting fieldwork evidence; and communicating geographical understanding through maps, numerical and quantitative skills and extended writing. 

• Understand the interaction between physical and human processes, recognising how landscapes, settlements, climate, resources and communities are connected and how these relationships change across local, national and global scales. 

• Be equipped to ask geographical questions, investigate places firsthand and through secondary sources, challenge misconceptions about people and environments, and make informed choices about sustainability, responsibility and their role in shaping a fairer future.

  History and Geography Curriculum Overview

Implementation

Our geography curriculum is underpinned by Parkside's Teaching, Learning and Assessment and Live Feedback Policy: 

Curriculum sequencing and lesson structure 

Geography units are explicitly sequenced so that each lesson builds on prior locational knowledge, place knowledge, vocabulary and understanding of human and physical processes; teachers begin each unit with retrieval that revisits maps, key places, prior concepts and fieldwork skills. 

Lessons follow a clear structure: objective and geographical enquiry question; explicit teaching of knowledge and vocabulary; modelling of map, data or fieldwork skills; guided practice using geographical sources; independent application through explanation, mapping, data presentation or comparison; and a plenary that returns to the enquiry question. 

Teaching and scaffolding (everyday practice) 

Teachers pre-teach and display tiered geographical vocabulary; use maps, atlases, globes, aerial photographs, diagrams, data sets, photographs and digital mapping to make abstract ideas and distant places accessible. 

Complex concepts are broken into taught steps, such as identifying a feature, describing its location, explaining the process that formed it, comparing it with another place and evaluating how people interact with it. 

Local geography is used regularly to support relevance and progression, enabling pupils to study the school grounds, the surrounding area and wider local community before connecting these observations to regional, national and global examples. 

Fieldwork is planned progressively from simple observation in Key Stage 1 to observing, measuring, recording and presenting human and physical features in Key Stage 2 using sketch maps, plans, graphs, photographs, digital technologies and appropriate geographical vocabulary. 

Assessment for learning and retrieval practice 

Short low-stakes checks, including quizzes, map-reading tasks, mini-whiteboard responses, vocabulary matching and two-sentence explanations, are used every lesson to check recall of taught content and identify misconceptions. 

A unit-end task requires pupils to demonstrate both geographical knowledge and disciplinary skill, for example by interpreting maps and data, comparing places, explaining a human or physical process, presenting fieldwork findings or writing a reasoned geographical conclusion. These tasks form the basis of subject-level moderation. 

Live feedback  

Teachers give immediate, subject-specific feedback during lessons focused on the accuracy of geographical knowledge and the quality of geographical thinking, for example correcting locational language, modelling stronger use of evidence, improving map symbols or prompting pupils to explain connections between human and physical features. 

Where pupils are producing geographical explanations, maps, graphs or fieldwork conclusions, teachers use live conferencing with selected pupils each lesson to improve accuracy, presentation, vocabulary and evidence-led reasoning. 

Live feedback is recorded briefly on the class planning grid: who received conferencing, the focus, and next steps for pupils who need follow-up in knowledge, mapwork, fieldwork, data handling or written explanation. 

Inclusion and adaptation 

Universal high-quality teaching is the first approach; additional scaffolds, including labelled maps, word banks, sentence stems, adapted data sets, visual prompts, practical fieldwork resources and mixed-media responses, are used to ensure pupils with SEND and EAL access the full curriculum. 

Where curriculum reduction is considered (for example, long-term EHCP needs), leaders document the rationale and the specific learning outcomes preserved. 

Monitoring, moderation and CPD 

Subject leader monitoring includes lesson visits focusing on retrieval, mapwork, fieldwork and live feedback; termly moderation of unit-end tasks across year groups; scrutiny of pupils’ geography books and outcomes; and pupil interviews to check retention of key knowledge, vocabulary and geographical skills. 

Findings inform a concise action plan and one targeted CPD session per term, for example effective fieldwork, progression in map skills, teaching geographical vocabulary, data presentation or supporting pupils to write high-quality geographical explanations. 

Success measures (how we know it’s working) 

Increased accuracy on retrieval checks over time and improved quality of unit-end geographical explanations, maps, data presentations and fieldwork conclusions. 

Evidence in monitoring records of regular, subject-specific live feedback and follow-up pupil improvement tasks in geographical knowledge, mapwork, fieldwork, data handling and communication. 

Moderation shows progressive development in pupils’ locational knowledge, place comparison, understanding of human and physical processes, fieldwork, map skills, data interpretation and geographical communication from KS1 to KS2.

Impact

At Parkside Community Primary School our geography curriculum ensures pupils leave with a secure understanding of places, people, environments and processes, and with the geographical skills needed to investigate the world responsibly. Because our curriculum is knowledge-rich, skill-led and carefully sequenced, pupils remember more and think geographically. 

What this looks like in practice and the difference it makes 

Pupils can name, locate and describe significant places, including their locality, the United Kingdom, continents, oceans and globally significant locations, using accurate geographical vocabulary as they move through the school. 

By the end of each key stage pupils produce increasingly sophisticated geographical work: simple observations, maps and comparisons in KS1; and by the end of KS2, confident use of maps, atlases, globes, compass points, grid references, fieldwork evidence, graphs, digital technologies and written explanations. 

Classroom retrieval checks, unit-end tasks, fieldwork outcomes and moderation show clear, progressive gains in pupils’ substantive knowledge of places, environments and processes, and in disciplinary skills such as enquiry, observation, measurement, recording, analysis, interpretation and communication. 

Live, subject-focused feedback in lessons rapidly improves accuracy of locational knowledge, use of geographical vocabulary, quality of mapwork, confidence with data and the reasoning pupils use to explain human and physical processes. 

Our use of local fieldwork, contrasting places, maps, photographs, data and real-world geographical issues ensures pupils from all backgrounds engage with the subject and understand their place in a wider world; scaffolds and pre-teaching enable pupils with SEND and EAL to access the full curriculum.