Geography at Orchard Meadow
Our Intent
At Orchard Meadow the geography curriculum will lay the foundations of knowledge and understanding to ensure that children become tolerant, confident and caring global citizens. We aim to inspire curiosity and fascination with the world around us and the world beyond our current experience. Children will develop a sense of identity based on their knowledge of the world and their place within it.
Through our drivers and linked enquiry questions children are taught about different places, people, resources and environments; have the opportunities to think deeply about the challenges that humans and our planet face and develop their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes and how these shape the Earth’s features over time.
As with all subjects in the Orchard Meadow Curriculum, choices about content have been carefully considered and 'stress-tested' against our curriculum drivers. For example, pupils develop an understanding of people's Determination through a case study of North American First Peoples in the Year 3 unit: How do people survive in a frozen world? Our Respect driver underpins Year 6 work on climate change with the enquiry question: Who's right: Greta Thunberg or Donald Trump?
Since geography is about engaging directly with the world around us we have endeavoured to include local links, where appropriate, in our curriculum content choices. Map skills are developed across the year groups with opportunities to practise 'on the ground' through orienteering, route plotting and geo-caching. Oxford Mini are close neighbours, so pupils learn about the global reach of industry and the many processes and air miles involved in constructing a Mini as part of the Year 6 unit: How many countries does it take to make a Mini Cooper?
An overarching enquiry question binds each unit together and links back to our drivers. Each unit then has a question to act as a stimulus for the unit.
Implementing our vision
Please click here to view our Geography Curriculum Overview to find out more about what our pupils study and how curriculum content is mapped against core geographical skills;
Our Geography Roadmap shows how content is built progressively;
And, our Geography Skills Progression Document shows how Geographical skills build over year groups from Nursery to Year 6.
We are committed to delivering our curriculum effectively against the 5C's: content, creativity, compassion, community and cohesion. See the individual unit plans ('5C's documents') below which detail lesson content, core and deepening skills and how each unit is linked to our drivers and enquiry questions. Knowledge Organisers summarise key learning and are shared with pupils and parents at the start and end of the unit.