Geography
Intent - Developing skilled geographers at Hindhayes:
Our aim is to nurture young geographers through engaging and empowering learning, to develop their natural curiosity and understanding of the world around them and instil in them the desire to find out more. We want to give our children an inquisitiveness, a love of finding out how and why our planet is as it is, and an appreciation of their bit of the world they see every day when they step outside their home. Our ambition is for our geography teaching to help build the knowledge and skills the children of today will need to realise their own potential and to solve the problems that will confront them in the future. Through our geography teaching, we hope our children to be able to make greater sense of, and act more thoughtfully about, both where they live and the wider world. Our intention is for our children to see that what happens in their localities and across the globe affects them, directly and indirectly. Through high quality teaching we aim to blend the three threads of geographical knowledge: facts, themes and key concepts (or big ideas) to help our children learn to think geographically. We also aim to offer the children opportunities to develop the key geographical skills to help them to understand geographical patterns and processes, building their interest in the subject and enriching their learning experiences. Our children will have the opportunity to develop their observational, questioning and investigative skills through first-hand enquiry-based learning experiences and fieldwork. We hope that through our geography teaching we will facilitate two of the most important linked ideas: looking at similarity and difference and moving in understanding and knowledge from the local to the global. The curriculum content has been carefully selected and sequenced to reflect this vision and to support the school context.
Developing Cultural Capital
At the beginning of the reception year, we spend time getting to know the child and their family and finding out about their homelife and where they live. The children start to explore their new school and grounds and develop their understanding of their school, its space and their place within it. Many of our children have had limited life experiences and so we believe in providing opportunities to develop their understanding of their village further. We offer opportunities to take part in walks to local areas of interests, such as parks, places of worship and theatres. Meeting members of the local community helps to build children’s understanding of their locality, as they come to see who uses these spaces and they begin to understand what occurs here. We are lucky to be based in a rural part of Somerset and are surrounded by countryside meaning opportunities to explore woods and farmland as well as nature reserves and hills are prevalent. Having a basic understanding of where they live means children can begin to compare where they live to other places in the world. Through high quality texts, we explore other countries and cultures and begin to think about what it might be like to live in other places. Children are encouraged to explore new lands through small world play, for example. This opens the world to the children as they begin to understand about different places and environments on planet Earth.