At All Saints’, our high quality teaching of geography embeds understanding and nurtures critical thinking for all of our children. Our geography curriculum is aspirational for all learners and underpinned by key concepts such as place, scale and interconnections. It is thoughtfully sequenced to support progression, with opportunities to re-visit and apply knowledge, with geographical vocabulary being applied in meaningful contexts. We understand that critical thinking can empower children to make informed choices to create, sustain and change the world around them. Therefore, our children’s learning is developed beyond the core knowledge of how, when and why, to understanding others’ perspectives as well as their own perceptions and feelings through skills such as identifying fact and opinion, bias and evaluating evidence. Through a foundation of core, personal and empathic knowledge, our children are encouraged to build mutual respect, values and empathy.

Our enquiry based learning helps children to understand how places are constantly changing, why they are important and how they are connected. We encourage our children to ask questions and be critical and creative thinkers who feel empowered to take care of our amazing planet. Our Rights Respecting Schools’ ethos and Christian Values encourage the children to appreciate others’ perspectives and value the world wide contributions that other people bring.

We want our children to develop their own sense of place, in their immediate locality, but to also have an insight into wider geography, and the complexities of the world around them.

Geography fieldwork and mapping starts from Early Years and moves from understanding of the very local to integral visits to different localities in person and also through virtual exploration in Key Stage 2.