Cop Lane CE Primary School
Geography Policy
Cop Lane CE Primary School
Geography Policy
This policy is embedded in the school’s mission statement which is;
Cop Lane C.E. Primary School
A Christian community;
Committed to one another;
Giving our very best at all times.
At Cop Lane CE Primary School it is our intent to nurture and develop the
whole child. The mission statement sets out our rationale for life and work in
school with reference to;



The high quality of education and opportunities we offer our pupils,
The commitment, concern and care shown to the whole community
involved with the school through a strong sense of Christian values,
The high expectations we have of all in whatever task we undertake.
Aims
Our aims at Cop Lane CE Primary School are:





To deliver a high quality education in a welcoming, friendly and
supportive environment where Christian values are central to the ethos
of the school and its teaching,
To have consistently high expectations which encourage each child to
achieve their maximum potential, regardless of faith, gender, race or
ethnicity,
To provide a stimulating and caring environment where self-discipline,
respect for others and good manners are valued and encouraged,
To continually foster positive links with parents, governors, children and
staff, enabling the school to play a positive role in the wider community
in which it is placed,
To create an ethos where achievement, in its widest sense of the word
is celebrated, where individuals are valued and a life-long love of
learning is fostered.
Statement of Intent
Our school aims to offer a secure and stimulating environment which meets
the needs of individual pupils. We believe that all pupils are entitled to receive
the support and challenge necessary to help them to develop their full
potential. We recognise the importance of identifying a wide range of abilities
and talents and of providing opportunities to nurture them. The needs of able,
gifted and talented pupils are acknowledged as part or our overall inclusion
policy. We believe in promoting inclusion and equality of opportunity.
We cannot assume that able pupils will automatically make appropriate
progress It depends on a range of environmental and personality factors,
including supporting home, school and learning environments. To make sure
that these pupils reach their potential, it is important to adopt and implement
appropriate policies and practices to meet their educational and
social/emotional needs. As for all other pupils, we aim to encourage and
support the more able and talented through a broad based, relevant and
challenging curriculum, encouraging the pursuit of excellence and celebrating
the achievements of each pupil. We believe in extension in depth and
enrichment in breadth.
Aims and objectives
Geography teaches an understanding of places and environments. Through
their work in geography, children learn about their local area and compare
their life in this area with that in other regions in the United Kingdom and in the
rest of the world. They learn how to draw and interpret maps and they develop
the skills of research, investigation, analysis and problem-solving. Through
their growing knowledge and understanding of human geography, children
gain an appreciation of life in other cultures. Geography teaching also
motivates children to find out about the physical world and enables them to
recognize the importance of sustainable development for the future of
mankind.
The aims of geography are:
•to enable children to gain knowledge & understanding of places in the world
and of how places can change;
•to increase children’s knowledge of other cultures and, in so doing, teach a
respect and understanding of what it means to be a positive citizen in a multicultural country;
•to allow children to learn graphic skills, including how to use, draw and
interpret maps;
•to enable children to know and understand environmental problems at a
local, regional and global level;
•to encourage in children a commitment to sustainable development and an
appreciation of what ‘global citizenship’ means;
•to develop a variety of other skills, including those of enquiry, problem
solving, ICT, investigation and how to present their conclusions in the most
appropriate way.
Teaching and learning style
We use a variety of teaching and learning styles in our geography lessons.
We believe in a mixture of whole-class teaching, group and individual work
methods and we combine these with enquiry-based research activities. We
encourage children to ask as well as answer geographical questions. We offer
them the opportunity to use a variety of resources, such as maps, statistics,
graphs, pictures, and aerial photographs, and we enable them to use IT in
geography lessons where this serves to enhance their learning. Children take
part in discussions, and they present their views to the rest of the class. They
engage in a wide variety of problem-solving activities. Wherever possible, we
involve the children in ‘real’ geographical activities, e.g. research of immediate
local environmental problem or use of the Internet to investigate a current
issue.
We recognise the fact that there are children of widely different geographical
abilities in all classes and we provide suitable learning opportunities for all
children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child differentiation. We achieve this by:
•setting common tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of
responses;
•setting tasks of varied/increasing difficulty;
•grouping children by ability in the room and setting different tasks to each
ability group;
•providing resources of different complexity according to the ability of the
child;
•using classroom assistants to support the work of individual children or
groups of children.
Geography curriculum planning
We teach geography through a topic based approach and ensure skills and
objectives from the National Curriculum for geography, are incorporated into
our curriculum planning. Planning has clear objectives and work is matched
to pupils varied abilities. We also investigate local areas and areas in the
wider world. We teach children to consider human activities and physical
features. We encourage children to compare and contrast different
places/areas. Through teaching about contrasting localities, we enable
children to learn about inequality and injustice in the world. We also help
children to develop their knowledge and understanding of different cultures so
that they avoid stereotyping other people and acquire a positive attitude
towards others. At times we arrange for the children to carry out a
geographical study independently.
Our geography curriculum planning is delivered through a cross-curricular
approach. We combine geographical study with work in other subject areas.
This promotes enthusiasm and provides an enriched curriculum. The
geography subject leader reviews plans on a regular basis. Medium term
plans detail the topic based areas. These are listed in the creative curriculum
map. Each class teacher creates a plan for each lesson. These daily lesson
plans list specific learning objectives. The class teacher keeps these individual
plans, and can discuss them with the geography subject leader on an informal
basis.
We plan the topics in geography so that they build upon prior learning.
Children of all abilities have the opportunity to develop their skills and
knowledge through planned progression built into the scheme of work. We
offer them an increasing challenge as they move up the school.
Assessment/recording/monitoring
We assess the children’s work in geography by making informal judgements
as we observe the children during lessons. Once the children complete a unit
of work, we make a summary judgement of the work for pupils and consider
whether they have yet to obtain, obtained or exceeded the expectations of the
unit. Class teachers keep the childrens geography work in the topic
folders/books. We record assessments and use these to plan future work.
The geography subject leader monitors standards of the childrens work and
the quality of teaching and keeps samples of teachers planning, childrens
work and details of pupil interviews. The geography subject leader supports
teachers and gives the headteacher an annual action plan in which she
evaluates improvement plans and indicates areas for further improvement.