Geography

At Starbank School, our children will develop a deep knowledge of both the physical and human geography of the local environment, the UK, and the wider world. It is essential that our pupils develop a meaningful understanding of place, including the positioning of Starbank School and Birmingham in the wider world. We will deliver a curriculum that:

• Inspires a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people;
• Equips children with an understanding of diverse places, people, resources and environments around them and the wider world;
• Allows children to build on prior learning about physical and human processes and the formation and use of landscapes and environments;
• Develops an understanding that the Earth’s physical features are interconnected and change over time;
• Encourages exploration of their own environment and supports children to make connections between their local surroundings and that of contrasting settlements;
• Systematically develops essential map skills on a variety of scales;

Learning begins in Reception and Year 1, where children learn the component knowledge of Small Heath, Birmingham and the UK, such as the names of the countries, capital cities and key human features. In Year 6, this culminates in the development of rich geography schema, encompassing, for example, a deep understanding of South America, biomes and world trade.

Our children use a range of maps and atlases so that geography map and fieldwork skills are systematically developed. Our geography progression map details the careful long-term curriculum sequencing of these essential skills. For example, in Key Stage 1, our children learn to locate and compare the position of major cities and seas on a UK map using the four basic compass directions. This culminates in Upper Key Stage 2 with children using the eight points of a compass and six-figure grid references to locate a range of human and physical features studied, such as settlement locations and river features.
Essential geographical concepts such as the features of rivers, volcano formation and factors effecting settlement location are taught by focussing on specific locations and regions. This allows invaluable comparisons to be made between the UK and other areas of the world.

Our knowledge-rich geography curriculum is taught according to the following whole school long term plan for geography:

The four main strands in the National Curriculum for geography are skills and fieldwork, locational knowledge, human and physical geography and place knowledge. These are carefully mapped out in our geography progression map.

Our children are given motivating and inspiring out-of-class opportunities and special experiences to embed essential learning. This enrichment is an essential element of our geography curriculum offer.