Curriculum
Geography
Curriculum intent, implementation, and impact
Intent
“The study of Geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world.” Barack Obama
At HLC, we believe in providing all children with a creative and meaningful Geography education that inspires curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. We aim to offer memorable learning experiences that deepen their interest in Geography. As an exciting and investigative subject, Geography at HLC promotes children’s understanding of diverse places, people, resources, and environments—both natural and human. Our curriculum fosters a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes.
Our spiralised Geography cycle covers the full breadth and depth of the national curriculum, enabling pupils to become independent learners. The curriculum develops rich contextual knowledge of local and global significant places and explains the processes behind key geographical features, showing how these can cause variation and change over time.
Our school values—belong, respect, inspire, succeed, and enjoy—are woven into Geography lessons, reflecting the cultural, social, spiritual, and moral diversity of our pupils. Children learn about different traditions, develop tolerance, and build an understanding of people and environments worldwide. They are supported to see the relevance of Geography to their past, present, and future, growing into independent, passionate, and knowledgeable geographers.
Implementation
Geography at HLC follows the National Curriculum, building understanding through clearly defined concepts, knowledge, and skills. We have designed a bespoke and coherent curriculum tailored to the diverse community we serve. Skills and knowledge build progressively year by year and are carefully sequenced to maximise learning for all pupils.
Each year, pupils study two sequenced Geography topics culminating in an enquiry-based endpoint, where they apply and analyse their knowledge and skills. Additionally, Geography skills are integrated into other topic learning throughout the year.
Children explore and investigate geographical features of our local area using a variety of sources such as maps, photographs, and the internet. They locate countries, cities, mountain ranges, rivers, seas, and oceans as part of their learning.
Knowledge Organisers containing key facts and maps are used alongside key geographical vocabulary contextualised within the places and topics studied—this helps pupils know more and remember more, rather than simply memorising lists of words.
In line with our inclusion policy, Geography lessons are planned to support all pupils, using inclusive questioning, equipment, mixed-ability groupings, and adult support. We also adapt lessons for pupils with specific learning, physical, sensory, or oracy needs so that all children have the opportunity to succeed in the subject.
Cross-curricular links are carefully planned, particularly with ICT, Maths, History, and Literacy, enriching pupils’ understanding and engagement. Our Geography sequences align with the focus texts for each year group, immersing children fully in their topics and fostering a knowledge-rich culture.
The Geography subject leaders monitor quality through lesson visits, pupil work scrutiny, and pupil discussions to identify strengths and areas for development.
Impact
We measure the impact of our Geography curriculum using:
- Summative assessments through pupil voice on their learning experiences.
- Moderation meetings to scrutinise pupil work and enable teacher dialogue.
- Staff feedback collected by Geography leaders on curriculum impact and pupil progress.
- Collection of photos, digital evidence, and examples of children’s work across all year groups.
- Regular updates and curriculum reviews reported to staff during Professional Development Meetings (PDM).
- Termly RAG-rated targets on the action plan to assess curriculum impact on pupil progress.
- Analysis of weekly Carousel quizzes to evaluate knowledge retention.
By the time children leave HLC, they will:
- Have a broad range of geographical skills linked to knowledge and understanding.
- Be confident in using key geographical vocabulary.
- Have a deep knowledge and appreciation of their local area.
- Feel a sense of awe and wonder about the fascinating world of Geography.
- Enjoy learning about Geography and take pleasure in exploring it.
Be aware of future opportunities involving geographical skills and understanding of development.
