We believe that our children are the future and geography at Heamoor aims to create a generation of learners who are curious about the world that they live in.  We aim to provide our children with a clear understanding of the ever-changing world around them, while making them passionate to protect it.  Excitement and wonder are at the forefront of our geography lessons where we bring the learning to life through a range of resources. 

Our curriculum is inclusive for all as we make reasonable adjustments to ensure that all of our children can become geographers.  A range of adapted resources, practical enquiry and clear, scaffolded questioning is used to achieve this.  Our children’s cultural capital is developed by completing purposeful fieldwork in our local area, while also providing our children with a number of opportunities to support us in protecting our local environment.  On a global scale, we introduce our children to diverse places, people and environments.  High-quality texts, maps, photographs and information sources develop our children’s reading stamina and their understanding of key geographical terminology.  Debates, discussions and structured talk provides our children with the opportunity to have a voice and develop their oracy skills, ability to listen and to work collaboratively.  Attendance and positive behaviour are promoted throughout all of our geography lessons, through meaningful fieldwork and an excitement to understand the world that we live in. 

How We Know Our Curriculum Works

Geography at Heamoor plays an important role in providing our children with an understanding of the world around them.  Our children are able to make connections between different elements of their learning, and apply the theory that they learn about in the classroom, to real-life scenarios while conducting fieldwork.  Our pupils tell us they enjoy geography because lessons are engaging, inspiring, and give them plenty of opportunities to learn in a variety of ways.  Our project books celebrate the children’s progress and provide evidence for our high-quality geography lessons.  Teachers’ feedback ensures that our children achieve clarity and embed their understanding.  Geography at Heamoor prepares our children for the next step in their education.  We build strong foundations in their understanding, while creating an excitement around geography and resilience during challenging periods. 

Our 3i's document outlines what we are doing, how we are doing it and the impact it has. 

'Kapow'

Kapow is used throughout the school to teach geography. 

Why we chose is Kapow - ''Kapow Primary’s Geography scheme of work aims to inspire pupils to become curious and explorative thinkers with a diverse knowledge of the world – in other words, to think like geographers. The intention is for pupils to develop the confidence to question and observe places, measure and record necessary data in a variety of ways and analyse and present their findings.''

Assessment

Geography assessment at Heamoor allows our teachers to have a clear understanding of the progress that each child is making and what the next steps are in their learning.  At the end of every unit of work, all of the children will complete a ‘hot task’ which is a multiple choice questionnaire that assesses all the information that the children can recall.  During each lesson, our teachers will regularly ask questions, observe and challenge our children in order to gain a clear understanding of each child’s level of understanding.

ECO Club

Our ‘ECO Heroes’ are learning how to live more sustainable lives and working hard to make our school more environmentally friendly.  The children have worked with Ben, from Sustainable Penzance, who created Captain Ban Plastic.  Ben delivered a workshop that involved the children creating their super hero who helped to protect the environment.  Throughout the year, the children are working to complete Surfers Against Sewerage’s ‘Plastic Free School’ award.  The children have already completed three of the five objectives, that involved them creating an action plan, completing a litter pick on our school grounds and contacting a member of parliament. 

We have been really lucky as Will from Biffa, and Ben from Sustainable Penzance, came into school to show us how we can live more sustainable lives.  Will explained to us all of the work that Biffa do and how they operate.  He also stressed the importance of reducing, reusing and recycling the materials that we use.  The children used their imagination and came up with creative ways that we could reuse cardboard boxes and jam jars.  The children were really excited when Ben shared his story about Captain Ban Plastic! The children were really engaged during this assembly and we were able to recall, and build on the knowledge that Ben shared with them last year.  

Continual development is vital.  Our subject leader action plan outlines the areas of extra focus, attention and development for the current academic year.

Pupil Voice

''I liked mapping our school and designing a better playground.'' 

''Learning about where our food came from was fun.''

'' I enjoyed exploring different places around the world.'' 

''I enjoyed learning about the Amazon Rainforest and writing a letter to the Brazilian President asking him to look after the Amazon Rainforest.''

‘’I enjoyed visiting our local park and completing some fieldwork to find out how this space is used.  I really liked seeing all of the dogs.''

‘’I really enjoyed learning about chocolate and where it comes from!''