South Gosforth First School - Geography Curriculum

'Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future’- Michael Palin

As a school, we believe that our high-quality geography education will inspire a curiosity and interest about the world and the people in it.

Using our ‘Key Concepts’ of Location and Place, Planning and Decision Making, Change, and Cause and Effect as the foundations of our bespoke curriculum we enable the children to ‘Think like a Geographer’ and give meaning and purpose to their learning. Through focused teaching the children gain substantive knowledge of places, people, physical and human features of the world and a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

Our geography curriculum makes full use of our location in the North-East of England to develop and apply our children’s disciplinary geographical knowledge whilst developing an appreciation for the environment around them. The proximity of coastline, rivers, towns and cities are all utilised to develop children’s locational and place knowledge.

Our aim is for our children to have a secure understanding of the place that they currently live in so throughout their time in our school they explore their immediate locality of Gosforth, their city of Newcastle and their wider region of the North-East and how that is fits within our country and the wider world.

Our curriculum is carefully sequenced so that children can make links to their prior learning in geography and the wider curriculum subjects, deepening their understanding. Pupils will develop their own lines of enquiry by asking and answering questions based on visual sources such as maps, pictures, photos, diagrams and graphs. They are also encouraged to explore the key geographical concepts through creative activities such as discussion and debate and Mantle of the Expert.

We ensure our curriculum is linked with current world issues for example climate change and dangers of plastics in our oceans so that children know how their learning in Geography ‘holds the key to our future’.

Please see below some of our key documents linked to the teaching of Geography here at South Gosforth First School, including a Geography Subject Overview, Geography Whole School Progression & Assessment document and Geography Long Term Plans for each year group: