Geography Intent
Our aim at St Teresa’s Catholic Academy is to provide pupils with a Geography curriculum which ignites a curiosity to discover the world around them and enables them to achieve well.
Our teaching & learning opportunities in geography:
🌍 explore a variety of places around God’s earth including the local area, other regions of the United Kingdom and places in the wider world
🌏 allow pupils to draw and interpret maps as well as analyse data and grow their problem-solving skills.
🌎 study the physical and human world, so pupils recognise the importance of sustainable development for future mankind & understand environmental problems at a local, regional and global level.
🌏 facilitate understanding of what it means to be part of a multi-cultural society and celebrate cultures different to their own
🌎 encourage all pupils to succeed, whatever their learning barrier and to find their place and identity in the world as they mature into global citizens.
The aim and purpose of Geography at St Teresa’s Academy is to provide high quality teaching to ensure all children make good progress and can apply their knowledge across the curriculum. Teachers promote pupils’ enjoyment of geography through experiences, role play, home learning projects and even a geography museum where we invite you as parents to tour our museum to find out some fascinating facts.
We believe all pupils can succeed in geography and St Teresa’s pupils are the next generation of climatologists, cartographers, surveyors, travel writers, explorers and more! Watch this space!.
Our curriculum drivers enable us to fulfil our mission of:
‘Pray Together, Aspire Together, Achieve Together. ’
Curriculum Drivers: Aspiration, Knowledge of the World, Communication, Preparation for Life, Community.
Implementation
Our geography planning uses and adapts some of the scheme units from PlanBee. However, our Curriculum lead has adapted some of the units to make them more bespoke.
Children have a weekly geography lesson in alternate half terms. They are expected to recall and use geographical vocabulary from previous lessons and build on a range of skills. As in many lessons, teachers ask pupils to self assess their knowledge and skills against success criteria for that lesson. All learning objectives challenge pupils and are in line with National Curriculum.
We continually review our geography provision because ‘Only excellence is good enough at St Teresa’s’.
Impact
We can assess the impact of our geography curriculum offer by looking at the improving work children produce. At home, ask your children to use some of their newly acquired geography vocabulary in a sentence for you or ask them to explain a key concepts or knowledge fact they have gained. Their retention is a good measure of the quality of geography education.
Each half term, knowledge organisers that include vocabulary, skills and knowledge to include in conversations and projects at home will be sent to you.
