Geography

Our creative curriculum developed ‘for Westgate Hill, by Westgate Hill’, has been designed to nurture and encourage natural curiosity and represents the distinctive nature of the subject of Geography. Each Geography topic is planned to incorporate how the substantive knowledge learned about the world can and will be used in later topics throughout the children’s schooling journey. 

Our creative curriculum is organised into three broad themes: Create, Explore and Discover. Within Explore (Geography), there are two topics for each year group, carefully selected to motivate and inspire children. The Explore theme within our creative curriculum is supported by Oddizzi, a Geography based scheme which is designed to ignite curiosity and inspire young minds, and Digimap, an online map and data delivery service where children and staff can access a wide variety of data collections. The schemes enable staff to plan and resource exciting lessons which develop vocabulary and promote the importance of reading and exposure to vocabulary within our Explore topics. As our creative curriculum fosters memorable, bold, relevant and engaging learning opportunities, a geography fieldwork progression document and fieldwork overview document has been developed to provide children with exciting fieldwork opportunities suitable for their year groups and topics. Our Geography curriculum highlights the importance of providing children with the opportunity to experience the world around them first hand.  

Children at Westgate Hill Primary Academy are curious, bright and creative; they have their own skills, talents and experiences to achieve their ambitions. To build upon this uniqueness, the BRAVE Curriculum for Geography recognises what we know about our children and what they need for future success. For example, field trips to explore the geography of our local area or ‘hooks’ into their learning are provided at the topic outset to engage. Parents are invited to attend these trips to make valuable links with their own experience, and encourage further learning at home. In the classrooms, accessible books relating to the current topic are provided in our libraries and concrete examples for the topic are available for independent discussion. Every day, we celebrate the cultural capital of our children, recognising that they already have much of what they need to succeed. 

In EYFS, pupils begin to make sense of their physical world and their community. In KS1, pupils begin to develop knowledge about the World, the United Kingdom and their locality, recognising features of their local area and a contrasting non-European area. In KS2, pupils develop a more in depth understanding of the World, the United Kingdom and their locality, including looking closely at environmental changes, the trade and the transportation of goods, and how climate can influence the way people may live in different climates around the world.