Geography

My house, my street, my town, my region, my country, the world.  Like reverse onion layers, Colby learners understand the world and its inter-connectedness along with their place within it.

 

Skills development and actual understanding of locational knowledge sit side by side at Colby School.  Children will learn about the local area, region and far off countries whilst developing their skills to state similarities and differences, observe, measure, record and present information gathered from fieldwork as well as recall facts relevant to the unit being studied.  These key concepts, as well as skills, support each other as the children progress through our curriculum.

 

Our curriculum all begins in Reception with the EYFS programme of study.  Children are encouraged to comment on, and ask questions about aspects of their familiar world including the natural environment.  They closely observe similarities, differences, patterns and change.  As they move to KS1, children look further afield from their immediate location and explore larger geographical areas like Africa, the seven continents, and polar regions to gain that vital factual knowledge including standard geographical vocabulary that prepares them for KS2.  Here they will investigate areas further away like rainforests, and Italy and India amongst others along with our local environment the Norfolk Broads.  As the children begin to synthesise more and more information with their collected knowledge and skills, they move into Year Five and Six where they again visit topics like Oceans and the U.K gradually becoming more and more focussed on areas like environmental concerns, erosion of the coast and energy generation.  The children hone their evaluation and presentational skills asking independent questions for research.

 

We have chosen our curriculum carefully. Whilst we follow the National Curriculum, we have a great deal of freedom to choose our own investigative topics and the knowledge we expect the children to learn.  We use the local area as inspiration for some of this learning.  We are geographically located near the North Sea which affects our weather patterns and crucially coastal erosion and deposition which will be one of the, if not, the most serious issue to face Norfolk in future years.  In conjunction with our educational partner the offshore wind generation company Vattenfall, we aim to educate our children into the benefits of renewable energy and how climate change might be alleviated.  We are on the doorstep of The Norfolk Broads National Park, Britain’s largest protected wetland.

 

We want our children to experience wonder when looking at a globe, atlas or Google maps and to always think ‘What’s it like there?’

 

What the children learn and do, feeds into subsequent units of work, which are assessed using quizzes, longer investigations, mind maps or direct questioning. 

 

Children at Colby love showing what they have learned and are proud of their skills and knowledge.