Geography: Vision

GEOGRAPHY LEADER

  Mr Taylor

'ALWAYS START WITH WHY'

What is Geography?

How do geographers work? What skills do they need and how do they think?

We have set out in these two website pages how we consider these questions with our children by mapping out and delivering a clear, consistent and challenging geography curriculum for our children to meet their needs. You can download copies of every central document at the base of the relevant geography pages (VISION or CURRICULUM OVERVIEW) in PDF format. The subject guide and policy itself can be found at the base of this page.

To take a look at our curriculum page CLICK HERE.

Our Vision For Geography

At Mayfield we believe computing is a crucial part of children’s learning, as technology is now essential to navigating our present world and innovating for the future. We therefore need to create aspiration in this area through the interesting outcomes we plan and the detail in the content itself.  We have created a scheme of work for computing as a precisely sequenced curriculum that breaks learning into tight, smaller units, with appealing outcomes, that become progressively more complex and chall 

At Mayfield, we believe that a high quality geography education should inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.  We believe that there can be few things more fundamental than learning about the ‘earth as our home’ and our understanding of it. Geography, when taught well, should fascinate and inspire children and nourish curiosity. Geography also deepens understanding of many contemporary challenges – climate change, food security, energy choices. As a subject, it impacts upon every aspect of our children’s lives and plays a crucial role in developing caring and understanding citizens of tomorrow. It is a challenging but essential vision!

At Mayfield, we want children to realise that geography is about them, growing up in their world. We want to build on children’s interests and experiences but also find ways to challenge and excite them with content that might be beyond their immediate  horizon or experiences. We carefully select projects which reflect the needs of our children - ones which, consider our unique locality and wider region, but also take them beyond the local area to explore the UK and the wider world, to develop a passion for learning so that they leave us excited about geography as a subject.

My latest work as Geography Leader...

I have been working with the senior leaders on our curriculum and ensuring that the Programme of Study fits fully with the National Curriculum expectations and our wider core intent. Like all leaders, there are a number of areas that are occupying my time at the moment.

* Make sure our unique position on the west coast is really coming through from planning into the classroom - it is a prime local resource to explore. Bring the coastline to our children or vice versa!; 

* A major priority is the development of new whole school Brain Gym: Place & Location Mats for regular use. Let's get that core knowledge to stick. The only way to do it is to build in that regular practice with the right supporting aides. 

* During my monitoring work, I am focusing carefully upon the prominence of mapwork and the accessibility of these resources within ever developing learning environments.

I really want to see how practical we can make our geography themes. We have an ideal locality and need to make the most of this within our new plans. Our children are also ready to be immersed in the precise terms we use in geography so I have also created a Geography Glossary of key terms to be used progressively through school. (You can find a copy on our CURRICULUM OVERVIEW page.) Let's get the terminology in there from an early stage - be challenging. Increase that vocabulary in tandem with the children's understanding.  After all 'dinosaur' could be a complex term but all of our children use it because they understand it!