St John’s, our Geography curriculum will deliver a high-quality education where children attain high, achieve well and are inspired and enthused to find out about the physical and human world. Through their growing knowledge and understanding of geography, demonstrating our value of Drive, children will learn about places, people and the environment in a logical and progressive way, taking part in carefully thought out ‘Field Studies’. Through the school value of Identity children explore their own locality and studying other localities, they will learn and master key geographical skills. Self-regulation of their learning will be promoted throughout. Furthermore, St John’s children will strive to demonstrate these values and behaviour throughout their geographical learning and field studies, representing the school in their actions, representing the school in fieldwork, with good manners and respect for our environment we study and visit.

Through our Geography curriculum at St. John’s, we will also nurture and encourage the children’s natural curiosity; we will shape and direct it to transform the children into inquisitive, questioning learners, striving towards Excellence with a strong sense of Character. They will become children who look closely at the world around them and they will be able to interpret what they see. We will motivate and inspire them through Teamwork to find out about their world, both physical and human, so that they can take an active part in protecting this world as they grow up. As part of their knowledge of the effects of human geography and through our value of Stewardship, we will instill in children a sense of environmental responsibility, encouraging them to understand current environmental issues at a local, national and global level and begin to make a positive change.

In Reception, Geography is taught as part of the ‘continuous provision’. It is taught through whole class, small group and 1:1 learning with a mixture of adult-led learning and some child-initiated learning with sustained shared thinking. Across the rest of the school, Geography is taught as part of our Topic curriculum alongside Art, History and Design and Technology. This is a deliberate decision in response to the Stakeholder views as well as the high priority we place on deepening knowledge. In order for children to be excited and inspired, it is important to us that they are fully immersed in the learning and can make links to other knowledge acquired– within Geography and across the curriculum, rather than seeing learning in isolation. Within each year group, the timetabling of Geography is flexible, depending on the topic learning journey. However, the timings average to approximately 1 hour per week. This ensures breadth and depth of knowledge and secure knowledge retention and skills progression. 

Our curriculum policy can be viewed here.

Geography outcomes