The Principles of the Geography Curriculum at Buxton Junior School

Our geography curriculum makes links between what has been learnt before, what is being learnt in other curriculum areas and what pupils will learn in the future, in order to develop schemas and enable deep learning.

Our high-quality geography education is designed to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. Teaching will equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.

As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world will help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments.

Teaching Geography at Buxton Junior School

• We use the CUSP geography curriculum resources, built around the principles of cumulative knowledge focusing on spaces, places, scale, human and physical processes, with an emphasis on how content is connected and relational knowledge acquired. These resources contain knowledge organisers for each unit of study, lesson by lesson dual coded knowledge notes based on the question they will investigate and have cumulative quizzes to allow teachers to check for understanding throughout the unit of work. Furthermore, unit specific vocabulary is outlined in addition to common misconceptions to aid planning.

• To develop pupils understanding about place, we complete the ‘Our Understanding of a Place’ sheet for each location studied. This allows pupils to build their schema of places studied in relation to our local area and the other areas they have studied in the BJS curriculum.

• To develop schema around the key geographical concepts of locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork we use our Geography Learning Journeys, allowing pupils to connect their learning throughout our geography curriculum and build on learning in Key Stage 1.