Hello and welcome to the Geography area. My name is Mrs Stephenson and I am the Geography lead. I am currently a Year 4 teacher, however I am responsible for overseeing all of the fabulous geography work that goes on throughout the school.
Like all of the other subject leaders here at Southwick Community Primary School, I aim to embed an ethos of over-learning, opportunities for revisiting prior taught skills and knowledge and creating passionate geographers who love to learn about the world around them!
Here at Southwick, we follow ‘The Essentials Curriculum’ which breaks down concepts into three key milestones. Teachers then use these milestones to inform their planning and assess the progress the children are making.
Whilst it is important for the children to learn about the world around them, I believe it is vital for them to have a good understanding of their local area too! We live in an amazing city with so many different things to see and do and it is so important to provide opportunities for the children to visit these places as part of their learning.
We also try to make geography ‘hands on’ where possible, ensuring that the children have a range of excellent resources to support their learning. We hope that this hands on approach will support the children in transferring their learning into the long term memory, which can be recalled at a later date. This should also help to create a passion for the subject and children who are curious about the world around them.
We also include a Geography week each year with each year group focusing on a different area. This has proven to be a great success as it allows the children to delve deep into their chosen focus topic. So far we have held a ‘Save the World Week’ and ‘Europe Week’ and the children absolutely love it! Each year group is given a focus for the week and produce some fabulous pieces of work to record their learning. This academic year, we will be holding a ‘Crazy Continents’ week where each year group will be allocated a continent to focus on. I can’t wait to see the amazing work that our children produce.
