Geography Intent, Implementation and Impact 

Intent

Our Geography curriculum draws upon several powerful sources of knowledge. It is our intention that pupils become increasingly expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating and connecting substantive and disciplinary geographical knowledge.

1. Substantive knowledge 

This is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content. Common misconceptions are explicitly revealed as ‘non-examples’ and positioned against known and accurate content, as pupils become more expert in their understanding. Misconceptions are challenged carefully and in the context of the substantive and disciplinary knowledge.

1. Disciplinary knowledge 

This is the use of knowledge and how children become a little more expert as a geographer, by ‘Thinking Geographically’. Pupils think hard about comparing and contrasting places, locations, physical and human features, processes, patterns, relationships, connections, environmental challenges, cause, effect and consequences, as well as reasoning and explaining change.

The features of thinking geographically in our Geography Curriculum are:

Place and Space       Scale and Connection        Physical and human geography        Environment and sustainability        Culture and diversity

 • Geographical analysis is developed through selecting, organising and integrating knowledge, through reasoning and making sense of the content, in response to structured questions and well-designed tasks that cause children to ‘think hard’ as geographers.

• Substantive concepts are the big ideas, and the golden threads, that run through our coherent and cohesive geography curriculum.

The substantive concepts that we develop through our Geography curriculum are:

Locational knowledge      Place knowledge      Human and physical geography      Geographical skills and fieldwork

Our Geography curriculum is built around the principles of cumulative knowledge- focusing on spaces, places, scale, human and physical processes, with an emphasis on how content is connected and relational knowledge acquired. An example of this is the identification of continents, such as Europe, and its relationship to the location of the UK.

Geography equips pupils to become ‘more expert’ with each study and grow an ever broadening and coherent mental model of the subject. This guards against superficial, disconnected and fragmented geographical knowledge. Specific and associated geographical vocabulary is planned sequentially and cumulatively from Y1 to Y6. High frequency, multiple meaning words (tier 2) are taught and help make sense of subject specific words (tier 3). Each learning module in geography has a vocabulary module with teacher guidance, tasks and resources.

Geography is planned so that the retention of knowledge is much more than just ‘in the moment knowledge’. The cumulative nature of the curriculum is made memorable by the implementation of Bjork’s desirable difficulties, including retrieval and spaced retrieval practice, word building and deliberate practice tasks. This powerful interrelationship between structure and research-led practice is designed to increase substantive knowledge and accelerate learning within and between study modules. That means the foundational knowledge of the curriculum is positioned to ease the load on the working memory: new content is connected to prior learning. The effect of this cumulative model supports opportunities for children to associate and connect with places, spaces, scale, people, culture and processes.

Implementation

We implement our intent using CUSP Geography. A guiding principle of Geography is that each study draws upon prior learning. For example, in the EYFS, pupils may learn about People, Culture and Communities or The Natural World through daily activities and exploring their locality and immediate environment. This is revisited and positioned so that new and potentially abstract content in Year 1 can be put into a known location and make it easier to cognitively process. Pupils in EYFS explore globes and world locations through their curiosity corners, making links to where animals live. This substantive knowledge is used to remember and position the locations of continents and oceans, with more sophisticated knowledge. High volume and deliberate practice is essential for pupils to remember and retrieve substantive knowledge and use their disciplinary knowledge to explain and articulate what they know. This means pupils make conscious connections and think hard, using what they know.

Please see the Overall Curriculum Statements for more on our Intent, Implementation and Impact.