Geography

At Mere Green, we recognise the importance of delivering a knowledge rich curriculum that is progressive and ambitious, covering all aspects of the National Curriculum from Early Years all the way through to Key Stage 2. Across the course of each unit of study, the core strands of location and place knowledge are developed and ideas about how they came into existence and how they shape and affect the way humans chose to live are explored. 

Within each unit of study, lessons are sequenced coherently to progressively deepen children’s understanding of key concepts, eventually feeding into an overarching key question. The systematic journey of each unit is designed in the same way ensuring that children gain a broader perspective of location first, focussing on continents and regions of the world before moving to place knowledge, at a much smaller scale, identifying human and physical features and the impact they have on each other. Having a clear journey in every unit, allows scope for children to apply knowledge of their own experiences and for us to further enhance the curriculum using technological advances to create ‘Awe and Wonder,’ in lessons.  

We encourage our children to make links within Geography from Early Years, therefore key themes are identified across all units enabling children to go back to previous learning, making our curriculum inclusive for all children and allowing us to fully develop the schema of each child. Covering themes more than once through a child’s time at Mere Green allows children to really deepen their understanding. Furthermore, as children progress through school, children’s understanding of locational and place knowledge, key geographical skills (map work, field work, describing and comparing) and human and physical processes increase in complexity.  

Education is an essential factor in the ever more urgent global fight against climate change. Knowledge regarding this phenomenon helps young people to understand and tackle the consequences of global warming, encourages them to change their thinking and practices and helps them to adapt to what is already a global emergency. As part of our curriculum, we also aim to educate our children about worldwide issues enabling them to become global citizens and helping them better understand their role within it.