Geography
Implementation
Geography at Ashton Hayes Primary School is taught through a carefully sequenced curriculum that ensures full coverage of the National Curriculum while building knowledge and skills progressively across the school.
The curriculum is structured so that pupils begin by exploring their immediate environment in EYFS and Key Stage 1, developing an understanding of their school, village and local area. As pupils move into Key Stage 2, they expand their knowledge to include Cheshire, the wider United Kingdom, Europe and the world. This progression from the familiar to the unfamiliar helps pupils develop a secure understanding of both their own locality and the wider world.
The curriculum is organised into units that are taught termly, allowing pupils to study geography in depth. A two-year cycle is used in our mixed-age classes to ensure that all pupils receive their full entitlement without repetition while allowing key geographical concepts to be revisited and developed over time.
Each unit is built around carefully sequenced core knowledge, geographical skills and enquiry questions. Lessons develop both substantive knowledge (what pupils know about places, environments and processes) and disciplinary knowledge (how pupils think, enquire and work as geographers).
Fieldwork lies at the heart of our geography curriculum. Pupils regularly use Ashton Hayes and the surrounding Cheshire countryside as a living classroom, developing practical geographical skills through first-hand investigation. Children learn to use maps, aerial photographs, digital mapping, compasses and fieldwork equipment to observe, measure, record and interpret geographical information.
Our curriculum is enriched through a programme of carefully planned visits and geographical enquiries. Pupils develop mapping and observational skills within Ashton Hayes, investigate rivers through first-hand fieldwork, and visit locations such as Thurstaston to study coastal landscapes, erosion, deposition and other physical geographical processes in real-life contexts. These experiences allow pupils to connect classroom learning with the world around them whilst developing the enquiry skills of geographers.
Ashton Hayes' national reputation as one of the UK's first carbon-neutral villages provides a unique context for environmental learning. Pupils explore sustainability, land use and environmental change within their own community before considering wider global issues such as climate change, trade, migration and resource management.
Teachers adapt learning to ensure that all pupils can access the curriculum. Visual resources, practical activities, structured support and collaborative learning enable all pupils to participate successfully. Geographical vocabulary is explicitly taught and revisited throughout the curriculum, enabling pupils to communicate their understanding with increasing confidence and accuracy.
Impact
Through the geography curriculum at Ashton Hayes Primary School, pupils develop a secure and coherent understanding of the world and their place within it. They build a strong foundation of geographical knowledge, including an understanding of key physical and human processes and how these interact to shape the world around them.
Pupils leave the school with the confidence to use maps, atlases, aerial photographs and digital technologies to investigate places and environments. They are able to carry out geographical enquiries, collect and interpret data, identify patterns and explain how physical and human processes influence the landscapes they study.
Through regular fieldwork and visits, pupils experience geography first hand rather than simply learning about it in the classroom. They develop the curiosity, observational skills and critical thinking needed to ask geographical questions and investigate the world around them.
By studying a wide range of places and global issues, pupils develop an appreciation of the diversity of the world's people, environments and cultures. They understand that places are interconnected and recognise how decisions made locally can have wider environmental, social and economic consequences.
At the same time, pupils develop a strong sense of place through their understanding of Ashton Hayes and the surrounding Cheshire landscape. They appreciate how their own community has responded to environmental challenges and understand that individuals and communities can make a positive difference to the world around them.
Ultimately, pupils leave Ashton Hayes Primary School as confident, curious and informed young geographers who embody our vision to 'Aspire to be Amazing'. They are equipped with the knowledge, skills and values to understand an ever-changing world and to play a positive and responsible role within it.