GEOGRAPHY

At St Raphael’s we want to inspire children’s curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, their cultures and lives. We want to develop and deepen their geographical knowledge, understanding and skills and for them to apply these thoughtfully and sensitively to benefit of themselves and others, having care for the Earth and its people, whoever and wherever they are. We have a strong focus on sustainability and stewardship, learning how to enable and enhance lives, environments and places and our Eco Council help to promote this further. We want the teaching to be meaningful so we have a strong focus on the school’s locality.  We want children to understand basic subject-specific vocabulary relating to human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, to enhance their locational awareness.

The national curriculum for geography has three distinct strands; Locational Knowledge, Human and Physical Geography and Geographical skills and Field Work.  Pupils are taught to:

• Develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes.
• Understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time.
• Are competent in the geographical skills needed to:

Collect, analyse and communicate with a range of data gathered through experiences of fieldwork that deepen their understanding of geographical processes.

• Interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).