Geography

Why Geography Matters

Children hold the power to protect our world.

Geography is challenging, motivating, topical and fun. Our society is becoming increasingly diverse so children need, more than ever before, to understand other people and cultures. Geography makes a major contribution to children’s physical, intellectual, social and emotional development.

How do children at Wood Ley learn Geography?

To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in geography, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. Geography is taught as part of a termly topic, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the National Curriculum. Geography teaching focuses on enabling children to think as geographers. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement.

The geography curriculum at Wood Ley Primary School is based upon the 2014 Primary National Curriculum in England, which provides a broad framework and outlines the knowledge and skills and taught in each Key Stage. Teachers plan lessons for their class using our Geography Progression Pathway and Map documents following the topics on the Long-Term Plan. Teachers use these documents to plan their geography lessons suitable to their class’s interests and what they want to learn. We plan and teach Geography by following the children’s interests to ensure learning is engaging, broad and balanced. The progression document ensures the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive throughout the school.

Educational visits are an opportunity for the teachers to plan for additional geography learning outside the classroom. At Wood Ley Primary School, the children have had many opportunities to experience geography on educational visits. The children have explored the local area including studying land use in Stowmarket and Felixstowe, river trips and visits to local museums as well as the Year 5 residential trip to Thorpe Woodlands. At Wood Ley, we are fortunate to have a forest school site on our grounds where the children can conduct their learning outside as well as deepening their understanding and care of the environment. In addition, teachers plan time into the curriculum to invite educational visitors into the classroom to bring the children’s geographical learning to life and extend their understanding of the topic.

Eco Warriors

Currently, we have achieved the Silver Award for Eco Schools and we are working towards receiving the Green Flag. Each year, our eco warriors are active members of our school society who previously have: run a bottle tops collection for a charitable cause, visited a local waste recycling centre, lead assemblies about how to save the environment, draw fish near drainpipes to remind others that only water goes down the drain, completed weekly checklists for energy consumption and recycling consumption, housed the wormery, completed litter picks and a representative from Anglian Water visited us to help us to learn about water conservation. During lockdown, the children completed a Geography challenge on ClassDojo and Year 3/4 created new eco trophies.

This year’s eco warriors are comprised of five Year Five children.

The children are:

Theo

Hollie H

Sophie

Imogen

Sophia J

We are going to be supporting Mr Rowland with the development of the forest school area as well as educating our peers about recycling, saving energy and sustainability.

Other great Geography links and activities:

Geographical Association – https://www.geography.org.uk/

National Geographic – https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/

MapZone on Ordnance Survey – https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/mapzone/

DigiMap – https://digimap.edina.ac.uk/

Oak National Academy – https://classroom.thenational.academy/subjects-by-key-stage/key-stage-2/subjects/geography

Sciencekidz – https://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/countries.html

Royal Geographical Association – https://www.rgs.org/schools/teaching-resources/?categories=Animation&utm_source=School+Members&utm_campaign=e21185bae0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_03_25_09_19&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bd6329754a-e21185bae0-

3D Geography – https://www.3dgeography.co.uk/geography-topic

Clickable world map – https://geology.com/world/world-map.shtml

BBC Teach – https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ks2-geography/zj7p47h

Oxford Owl Geography – https://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/for-home/school-year/subject-guides/geography-at-primary-school/

Mini Map Makers – https://minimapmakers.co.uk/free-mappy-downloads

Get kids into survey – https://www.getkidsintosurvey.com/resources/

World Geography games – https://world-geography-games.com/world.html

Geography stories – https://www.storylineonline.net/books/how-i-learned-geography/