Geography

Intent – What do we want children to learn?

Geography helps children make sense of the world around them. At Birchwood, we want our pupils to be curious, thoughtful, and excited to learn about different places and environments.

As they move through the school, children will first develop a strong understanding of their local area. From there, they will start to make links with other regions, countries, and global processes.

Our Geography curriculum is built around four main areas:

• Locational Knowledge – learning where places like cities, countries, continents, and seas are

• Place Knowledge – comparing different places and understanding their features

• Human and Physical Processes – exploring how people and nature shape the world

• Geographical Skills – using maps, globes, and digital tools to understand and interpret information

Children will learn to use tools like maps, globes, and digital software (such as Digimaps) to explore geography and understand the idea of scale—how different places and distances can be represented.

Throughout their learning, children will study both their own community and other parts of the world, making meaningful comparisons and building a solid understanding of how different places work and connect.

Implementation – How are we going to achieve our intent?

At Birchwood, we’ve carefully designed our Geography curriculum to meet — and go beyond — the National Curriculum. We’ve made the most of our local setting to create a curriculum that is relevant, engaging, and meaningful for our pupils.

Our Geography curriculum is built around a clear progression of skills, knowledge, and vocabulary, developed specifically for our school. To support teaching, we also use the Kapow scheme of work, which helps staff deliver high-quality lessons. Pupils also use Digimaps, an online mapping tool, to explore and understand geographical data through Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Curriculum Structure

• It is part of our Humanities curriculum, which alternates half-termly between Geography and History.

• When Geography is the focus, we also use “History flashbacks” at the start of lessons to help pupils recall previous learning and build strong links between subjects.

This structure allows children to develop a deeper understanding of each Geography topic and helps them to remember key knowledge and skills over time.

Cross-Curricular Learning

Wherever possible, we link Geography to high-quality books and give children chances to write in different subjects, such as English. This makes learning richer and more meaningful.

Teachers use our own Progression of Skills grids, which match the National Curriculum and ensure children cover the right content at the right time. We also produce bespoke medium-term plans for each Geography unit, carefully selecting the most important knowledge for children to remember and build on in the future.

Impact – What will it look like when we have achieved our intent

Where ever possible we use physical and human resources that are bespoke to our school to enhance the teaching of humanities.  For example, when we teach “our Local Area,” and “World War 2,” we look directly at the rich geography and history on our doorstep.  Who was ‘Douglas Bader,’ and why was he so important locally?  We also do a field trip of the old world war 2 run way that is next to our school field and interview local residents who also lead a geography traverse and field trip of Martlesham Heath. Through the use of our local resources, children’s interest and enthusiasm is enhanced, as is their knowledge of the area in which they live.  Previously this has led to superb pupil achievements – eg one pupils’ WOW homework on the local area – ‘Martlesham Heath’ is now a published book in the British Museum!