Any amazing adventure starts with planning where you want to go, knowing what challenges you may face along the way and developing the skills needed to ensure you can meet those challenges head-on. In our ever-changing and developing world, we must provide our children with opportunities to undertake adventures, whether that be around our local area or further afield, give them a clear understanding of issues or difficulties they may face in our world, such as climate change, deforestation or endangered animals and teach them the skills they need to embrace the challenges they will face along the way.

At Winnersh, we aim to inspire brave and curious geographers, children who engage with the world around them and seek to know more. Our well-planned and creative curriculum not only provides the opportunity to learn key skills but also supports our pupils to become knowledgeable, aware and respectful members of our community and the wider world.

At Winnersh, geographical skills are taught within the context of Geography lessons and cross-curricularly as part of other lessons such as Master Reader, English, Science, History and Maths. We feel that this provides the children with wider of understanding of what geography is and how it relates to their world, how it has changed over time and the impact of key decisions or events on future generations.

Mapwork and Fieldwork skills link not only to learning but to the school trips the children will undertake. Children use digimaps, road maps and ordinance survey knowledge to build a clear understanding of where they are going, what geographical features they might see on the way to their site and what they might see when they arrive. During trips children will build upon fieldwork skills taking opportunities to conduct surveys, collecting samples or the environment, collecting data and taking photos.

Key questions teachers ask themselves when planning lessons are:

• How will my lessons inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people?
• How will my lessons build on the core knowledge of pupils from previous years?
• How will I develop our children’s sense of place for our children within my lessons?
• How will my planning support and develop the children’s understanding of sustainability?

If Geography is taught successfully throughout the school children should be able to achieve the following by the time they leave primary school:

Locational Knowledge

• Locate the world’s countries, using maps to focus on Europe (including the location of Russia) and North and South America, concentrating on their environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries, and major cities
• Name and locate counties and cities of the United Kingdom, geographical regions and their identifying human and physical characteristics, key topographical features (including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers), and land-use patterns; and understand how some of these aspects have changed over time
• Identify the position and significance of latitude, longitude, Equator, Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, Arctic and Antarctic Circle, the Prime/Greenwich Meridian and time zones (including day and night)

Place Knowledge

• Understand geographical similarities and differences through the study of human and physical geography of a region of the United Kingdom, a region in a European country, and a region within North or South America

Human and Physical Geography

Describe and understand key aspects of:

• Physical geography, including: climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts, rivers, mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the water cycle
• Human geography, including: types of settlement and land use, economic activity including trade links, and the distribution of natural resources including energy, food, minerals and water

Geographical skills and fieldwork

• Use maps, atlases, globes and digital/computer mapping to locate countries and describe features studied
• Use the eight points of a compass, four and six-figure grid references, symbols and key (including the use of Ordnance Survey maps) to build their knowledge of the United Kingdom and the wider world
• Use fieldwork to observe, measure, record and present the human and physical features in the local area using a range of methods, including sketch maps, plans and graphs, and digital technologies

Children will also be able to:

• Make relevant links from geography to other curriculum subjects, such as history and science.
• Show a keen inquisitiveness about the world around them