Aims and ambitions

At Old Basford School, we want our children to be engaged, skilled and knowledgeable geographers. We educate our pupils so they have a coherent knowledge and understanding of diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Using a clearly planned out curriculum, our children are equipped with a variety of geographical skills through an enquiry base approach. We intend to provoke thought, questions and to encourage children to discover answers to their own questions through exploration and research to enable them to gain a greater understanding and knowledge of the world and their place in it. Our children feel empowered to be curious and fascinated about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

Sequence and Progression

In EYFS, we teach Geography through the Early Learning Goal of: Understanding of the World (People, Culture and communities). We build on and develop all children’s interest in their local environment and beyond, progressing from the familiar to distant situations. For example, using the continuous outdoor provision to observe changes in the seasons and to discuss how to look after their environment. The children also learn about mapping skills by drawing their own treasure maps and referring to an outdoor world map to replicate famous landmarks.

We then follow the National Curriculum in Years 1 to Year 6. We have adapted the NC in to the Old Basford Curriculum Progression map and aligned this with the OBS creative topic based approach to learning. The units of learning are age appropriate and progressive from EYFS to KS2. The three main areas of content are: locational knowledge, place knowledge, and human and physical features. The four main subject specific skills that bind the Geography curriculum together are: geographical enquiry, direction and location, map work and fieldwork.

At the beginning of each lesson, key concepts and subject specific vocabulary are revisited and built upon. In addition, the learning objectives linked to knowledge and skills are shared explicitly to the children.

Children leave OBS ready and equipped to face the next stage in their Geography education.

Curriculum Progression

AUTUMN 2023

Foundation 2

We are very fortunate to have such fantastic school grounds for the pupils to do field work in!  Here F2 looked for evidence that it was Autumn and recorded what they found.

YEAR 3

During their history topic, Year 3 used Digimaps to locate the amazing Stonehenge and annotate it.  In Autumn 2, Y3 studied volcanoes and earthquakes.  Here they are, using their map skills to locate and find facts and building volcanoes as part of their Wow Day.  Great Geography work Year 3! (Due to a technical difficulty, I am unable to upload all of the photos but they are on the Y3 website page!)

Year 5

As part of Year 5's local history topic in Autumn 1, they used Digimaps to compare  historical land use with today.  They also made their own maps when creating their own fair on school grounds.  Children practised their field work skills at the Forest Recreation ground while Goose Fair was packing away!

Week one of term and getting ready to learn geography

across the school!

Memories from 2022 - 2023

YEAR 5

Year 5's topic was Being Empowered and addressed renewable and non renewable sources of energy.  On WOW Day, they built turbines in teams and considered the best location for them on the school grounds.  Digimaps and atlases were used throughout the topic.

Each term, all year groups are set a creative topic homework challenge.  Here are a couple of examples.

YEAR 3

Y3's topic was What Makes Great Britain Great.  As part of their WOW Day they c learned about London landmarks and designed their  own versions of them.  Later in the topic, they asked geographical questions, researched and presented their findings in teams.

YEAR 2

On Y2's WOW day, they made passports, went on a plane journey to Nairobi in Kenya and tasted traditional food. 

Year 3

In Autumn 2, Year 3's topic was Extreme Earth.  They kicked their topic off with a WOW Day that literally went off with an explosion!  Map skills were used in and out of class, volcanoes were dramatised, made using paper and card in teams and finally erupted!