Geography

At George Eliot, our geography curriculum aims to nurture children’s natural curiosity about the world whilst enabling them to make sense of their own place within it. By making links to other subject areas and connecting with their personal, social, and emotional development, we equip our children with the skills to understand and form opinions about the human and physical features of the local and global environments. We aim to inspire responsible and empowered citizens.

Geography learning takes place in the classroom, the school grounds, in our local area and occasionally further afield. Each year, the children have at least one experience of field work. Learning in each year group follows a focussing line of enquiry and aims to motivate the children by acknowledging their interests and existing understanding and building upon these. We are fortunate at George Eliot to have pupils and families from all over the world, so we make the most of the opportunities to learn from each other. Some examples of enquiry questions that lead learning have been:

• What’s the weather like? (KS1)

• How are London and Tokyo similar and different? (KS1)

• What can maps teach us? (KS2)

• Where should the next Olympics be held? (KS2)

Geography is dynamic in essence and since each group of children has their own interests and understanding, we reflect and adapt our curriculum design continually. Through the whole school curriculum three concepts are core:

• 'Space' - the location of points, features or regions in absolute and /or relative terms and the relationships, flows and patterns that connect and / or define them.

•  'Place' - a construct that is defined in terms of what it is like, what happens there and how and why it is changing.

• 'Scale' - the 'zoom lens' that enables us to view places from global to local levels.

Here are some children’s perspectives of geography at George Eliot:

• “I like that we get to learn about different countries, their culture, food and more.”

• “I like making maps of the school.”

• “I like that teachers explain things really well and very clear and it is fun.”