Geography

Our New Geography Curriculum

At West Coker Primary School, we are proud to introduce our newly restructured geography curriculum, thoughtfully designed to be more personal, relevant, and engaging for our children. This refreshed approach reflects our commitment to helping pupils connect with their local environment while developing a broader understanding of the world around them.

Our curriculum has been carefully developed to ensure progression, coherence, and continuity across all year groups. In Key Stage 1, we follow a two-year rolling programme, which you can explore in the Key Stage 1 and 2 documents. In Key Stage 2, we implement a four-year rolling programme, allowing for deeper learning and the sustained development of geographical thinking.

Curriculum Structure in Key Stage 1

In Key Stage 1, our geography journey begins with the familiar and gradually expands outward:

1. Local Geography – exploring West Coker
2. UK Geography – investigating other locations across the United Kingdom
3. International Geography – discovering global locations and cultures

Curriculum Structure in Key Stage 2

In Key Stage 2, children continue to build on their geographical knowledge through a four-year rolling programme. Their journey expands from local and national contexts to a broader global perspective:

1. UK Geography – deepening understanding of regions and landscapes across the country
2. European Geography – exploring physical and human features across Europe
3. International Geography – investigating global environments, cultures, and connections

Our Curriculum Framework

Each unit across both key stages is structured around a set of core geographical concepts:

– Place

– Scale and Space

– Environment and Time

– Earth Systems

– Human and Physical Interconnections

– Sustainability

– Fieldwork Opportunities

This consistent framework, revisited throughout each phase of learning, ensures that children develop a strong understanding of what it means to think like a geographer. It fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and a deeper appreciation of the relationships between people, places, and environments.

By continually engaging with these concepts, pupils build a robust and transferable understanding of geography—empowering them to make meaningful connections and view the world through a geographical lens.

Intent

At West Coker Primary School, Geography lessons will engage children and allow children to enthusiastically gain a deep understanding their local environment and of the world around them. Children are encouraged to develop a greater knowledge and understanding of the world, as well as their place in it and beyond their immediate locality. Our aim is to make children aware of the diversity of places and people around the world locally, nationally and globally, and interest them about both human and physical geographical features. Through their learning at West Coker Primary School, children are given the opportunity to positively progress and build on their skills and understanding across an exciting and rich curriculum, where their confidence to use a range of geographical resources is established. We encourage our children to be ambitious geographers who want to achieve, with a sense of awe and wonder about their world to enhance their sense of responsibility for care of the earth. 

Implementation

The children will have many opportunities to revisit and use their prior knowledge. Quality teaching of Geography throughout the school will ensure good progress. Quality resources which will allow the children to discover the world such as: up to date globes and atlases which accurately reflect the world’s changing borders, choices of books, online videos and any other resources. They will also have frequent opportunities to take part in hands on fieldwork and opportunities to create and test out their own research projects and surveys.

Impact

Children will have a deep understanding of what human and physical geography is and be able to consider how these aspects impact daily life. They will secure locational knowledge and will be able to understand their place in the world at a local, national and global level. The children will ask geographically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. Show respect when learning about places which are culturally different to them. Children will construct informed responses that involve using new knowledge and also making connections in what they have learnt prior to this. They should think critically about the impact of physical geography on the human environment and vice versa. They will analyse the links between human actions and the environment and how this has changed over time. Most importantly, children will be able to use their own first hand experiences to draw upon in order to demonstrate their knowledge.