Geography

Everything we do at St George’s is underpinned by our four Christian values of Love, Faith, Courage, and Honour. We aim to provide an excellent, well-rounded education that nurtures academic, emotional, and spiritual development, preparing all pupils to fulfil their potential in an inclusive environment in God’s world. Our Geography curriculum reflects this vision by enabling children to understand, respect, and protect the diverse world God has created—developing the knowledge, skills, and curiosity they need to become informed, responsible global citizens.

Geography road map

At St George’s, our Geography curriculum is knowledge-rich, skills-progressive, and rooted in a clear understanding of how geographers think and work. It equips pupils with a secure body of substantive knowledge (places, locations, environments, physical and human processes) and disciplinary knowledge (enquiry, fieldwork, data interpretation, decision-making). Learning builds cumulatively year-on-year, beginning with children’s immediate locality of Middleton St George and expanding to regional, national and global contexts.

Our curriculum is structured around key geographical concepts including place, space, scale, physical and human processes, planning and decision making, diversity, sustainability, and change. These concepts underpin every unit and help pupils to interpret and make sense of the world. Geography lessons incorporate a strong balance of knowledge acquisition and geographical skills, including mapwork, field sketches, data collection, graph interpretation, aerial and satellite imagery, digital mapping and geographical enquiry.

Fieldwork and Decision-Making

Fieldwork is a central and non-negotiable element of our curriculum. Pupils take part in a wide range of experiences—investigating air quality in Middleton St George, analysing local buildings, exploring river features, and studying coastal processes in Saltburn. They learn to collect, record and interpret geographical data and apply this to real-world contexts.

Decision-making tasks are woven into the curriculum, enabling pupils to consider options, weigh evidence, justify viewpoints, and evaluate geographical issues—for example, choosing the most suitable location for a SUP session on the River Tees, where the best location for a wind farm would be, or deciding how land use could be improved in the local area. These tasks develop critical thinking, communication and social reasoning skills.

Assessment, Retrieval and Memory

To secure long-term understanding, retrieval practice is embedded into every unit through low-stakes quizzes, concept recall, vocabulary revisits and spaced practice. Each topic ends with an end-of-unit assessment which may take the form of a decision-making exercise, a short written explanation, a fieldwork presentation or an enquiry outcome. These assessments demonstrate pupils’ understanding of both geographical knowledge and disciplinary thinking.

Inclusion and Adaptations for SEND

Our curriculum is designed to be fully accessible and ambitious for all pupils. We provide carefully considered adaptations for SEND learners, including:

• pre-teaching and revisiting key vocabulary using visuals and dual coding

• scaffolded tasks with sentence starters, writing frames or structured templates

• chunked fieldwork tasks with adult support

• use of concrete resources, simplified maps and enlarged print

• alternative ways of demonstrating learning (oracy, role-play, labelled diagrams, digital tools)

• regular retrieval to reduce cognitive load

• carefully selected, high-clarity knowledge organisers for each unit

Through these adaptations, all pupils—regardless of need—access the full Geography curriculum and develop geographical understanding over time.

What We Aim For

By the time pupils leave St George’s, they will have:

• a secure understanding of locations, place knowledge and physical/human processes

• the ability to carry out fieldwork independently, collect data and draw conclusions

• confidence in decision-making tasks, using evidence to justify viewpoints

• the ability to communicate geographical understanding using accurate vocabulary

• an appreciation of global diversity, interdependence and sustainability

• the personal responsibility to care for God’s world and understand their role within it

Our Geography curriculum develops knowledgeable, articulate and responsible young people who understand the world around them and can think critically about its future.