At Trent, the study of geography involves our pupils exploring the relationship and interactions between people and the environments in which they live. Many of the pupils who currently attend Trent will live to see the next century and inhabit a world of approximately 11 billion people.  The plethora of opportunities and challenges that will arise during their lifetime will be very much about geography at personal, national and global scales.  What we intend pupils to learn in geography reflects this throughout the curriculum.

Geography lessons at Trent generate a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that we hope will remain with each child for the rest of their lives. Our pupils learn about diverse places, people, resources, environments, with a deepening understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes and of the formation of landscapes and environments over time.

All geography lessons are linked to a project and ‘big questions’ provide children with an enquiry-led approach to their learning, leading to them developing their own questions to investigate. Children are given the opportunity to deepen their geography knowledge and develop key geography skills by working like geographers. Out-of-classroom learning is essential and many stimulating varied ‘beyond the classroom’ learning experiences regularly take place. We aim to experience geography first-hand by getting outside, visiting various geographical sites or bringing geography to the classroom through interactive tools. Fieldwork is a key part of our geography lessons with fieldwork opportunities, both around and beyond Trent, taking place.

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At Trent, geography gives pupils a very good understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected. Pupils are given opportunities to carry out increasingly complex geographical enquiry, apply questioning skills and use effective analytical and presentational techniques in a wide range of contexts.

The learning objectives of each lesson draw from knowledge and skills included in the National Curriculum. Projects provide highly productive opportunities to use and apply literacy, numeracy and computing skills whilst learning geography through a variety of stimulating, creative activities.

We have strong links with the local and wider community - these relationships provide a rich, and real, context to learning about national and global issues.

At Trent, we believe that our children have excellent experiences of geography as an active subject, essential to understanding, describing and caring for our planet and all its peoples.

In particular, we have established a school curriculum plan for geography as an entitlement for all pupils that is:

•             Aspirational in terms of instilling in our pupils a desire to achieve the highest levels of success through providing them with the opportunities to excel in terms of their acquisition of long lasting knowledge and understanding, and mastery of core geographical skills.  Such high aspirations are clearly identifiable in the progressive and increasingly challenging objectives of the schemes of work of each enquiry, which define what the pupils will know, understand and be able to do;

•             Logical, relevant, broad and balanced in terms of the areas of subject content we have selected which reflect the guidance of, and are commensurate with, the demands of the National Curriculum.  For example, we have ensured that content includes an even proportion of physical and human investigations such as the effect of rivers on the landscape and the impact of the rise of megacities in the world.  Due consideration has been given also to making certain that our geography curriculum maintains relevancy and topicality through including enquiries that engage pupils in studying issues such as climate change, flooding and trade;

•             Sequenced to ensure that pupils can build on previous knowledge and understanding as they tackle more complex and demanding enquiries;

•             Progressively more challenging in Years 1 through 6, both in terms of the complexity of the subject knowledge we want our pupils to acquire and also the critical thinking skills we support them in utilising to ensure they understand the significance of that knowledge;

•             Built upon and has continuity with the provision for geography established in the Early Years Foundation Stage and in particular that which addresses the knowledge and skills expectations of the People, Culture and Communities Early Learning Goal;

•             Inclusive in terms of delivering the same curriculum to all of our pupils irrespective of specific learning needs or disabilities and differentiating where necessary through in-class support, providing different learning environments, alternative learning activities and assessment outcomes.