As a school, it is our aim to provide children with the knowledge, understanding, attitudes, values and skills that they need in order to reach their potential as individuals and within the community.
Geography lessons at Drayton Infants inspire our pupils with a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people, which we hope, will remain with each child for the rest of their lives. We aim to develop pupils’ interest in both their own surroundings and in the variety of physical and human conditions in the wider world. Geography should provide an interesting and exciting way for pupils to engage with both their local area and the fascinating aspects of the world they live in. We believe it is important to provide our children with opportunities to sue a range of investigative problem-solving skills both in and outside the classroom, to develop a deeper understanding of geography.
Our Geography teaching aims to support this by developing the skills, knowledge and attitudes towards confidently engaging and learning through a variety of activities differentiated for each individual so enable them to meet their full potential within the subject area.
We have a school subscription to ‘Oddizzi’, which is an online resource where we can access videos, photographs, and online activities to embed knowledge about the world and its different features. ‘Oddizzi’ offers e-card links to other schools around the world and class quiz’s too. ‘Oddizzi’ also supplies suggested planning and assessments for different areas of the world linking to the National Curriculum for both KS1 and KS2.
Our geography curriculum at DCIS has been designed and updated in a way that supports all children through engaging enquiry-based topics that promote the children to become independent and confident learners and to reach their individual full potential. Teaching is varied with hands-on and written activities supported with a wealth of both non-fiction and fiction text and primary and secondary resources, are mindful of preferred learning styles and the need for differentiation within year groups and classes. We have created and shaped our curriculum to be supportive and accessible to all children within our school. We endeavour to introduce the children to new vocabulary and cross-curricular links to the Power of Reading to ensure the sessions and teaching is engaging and purposeful. Through careful language and thoughtful delivery, the children’s exposure to the subject is always a positive one, promoting wider thinking, curiosity and understanding of the world. The curriculum at our school has been developed and planned to allow there to be many cross-curricular links, which allows for the learning to be embedded and revisited frequently to support the needs of all children, and their learning.
At DCIS we aim to encourage children to use what is learned in lessons and to apply it to everyday life in their local community and beyond. We strive to create an environment where the children feel comfortable enough to ask questions and explore the geography of the local community, Great Britain and the wider world.
Geography at DCIS is delivered by confident and trained staff members who know the children well enough to be able to guide each individual though aspects that may be difficult to understand though differentiation. There is a clear action plan in place to ensure that this area of learning remains up to date and changes as required. Monitoring of geography is carried out half-termly to ensure that there is a consistency in the teaching of the subject. This term the action plan covers a resource audit to ensure that classrooms and teaching staff are offering children at different ages the opportunity to widen their geographical knowledge and confidence to aid their independent learning.
