Geography
Vision
Providing a world-class curriculum for students educated within Twynham Learning is fundamental to the educational vision of our Trust. In doing so our Geography curriculum vision is based on the core purpose of each of every TL school: A curriculum that exists to serve its community, unlocking potential and allowing students to be successful; inspiring excellence in all that they do.
Through our teaching of Geography, we also aim to inspire, excite and engage. At all Twynham Learning schools we endeavour to create a culture and a love of learning in Geography and deliver our curriculum with passion and enthusiasm. We want pupils to carry this love of learning from year to year, both inside and outside the classroom.
Our curriculum is designed for all staff to be able to deliver the content with confidence and we hope this will enable inspiring lessons to be delivered in all classrooms, no matter what key stage or school. We encourage teachers across the trust to share best practice in order to continually improve the curriculum and its delivery. Every classroom requires access to an appropriately scaled world map.
Community linked
We want the students of Twynham Learning to be embedded within the community in as many aspects as possible. We aim to teach them to understand the part they play within our community. Our students should consider themselves drivers of change, using the voice and systems provided to them by TL Student Voice. We see fieldwork as an essential aspect of our curriculum, a recognition that our community can be ever strengthened by improved engagement between stakeholders. Geography explains the relationship between people and place and is best-placed to support the teaching of social justice and equity.
Climate Change
Climate Change and the science relating to it is taught throughout the Geographical curriculum through a variety of places and stories of stakeholders. We endeavour to outline the causes, effects and responses to this global situation through the eyes of those most detrimentally affected. Sustainability is taught throughout the various year groups through the lens of different issues from climate, pressures on agriculture, sea level rise and climate-forced migration.
Informed Thinking
The Geography curriculum has been designed around aspects of the spiral curriculum. The best way to seek to foster a sense of awe and wonder about the world whilst allowing pupils to become familiar with spatial aspects of geography within a range of scales including the local and global. We believe that students will achieve greater outcomes if they are provided with a curriculum that allows them to practise skills from different viewpoints in a range of ever-challenging contexts
We plan to build our curriculum around 3 of the Geographical Associations core concepts of Place, Process and Sustainability with the key skills of numeracy, literacy, graphicacy, fieldwork and oracy being embedded within everything that aim to do. This plan helps to build upon the core subjects studied every day in the primary classroom.
The students should see Geography as an intrinsic bridging subject between their other subjects.
Outward Looking
We will empower all young people to be global citizens. We will teach a better understanding of climate change including a greater connection to nature. We will provide practical opportunities to participate in activities to increase climate resilience, reduce carbon impact and enhance biodiversity will enable children and young people to translate knowledge into positive action to improve their local communities, their country and the planet.
Furthermore, our curriculum will cover mutual tolerance and respect through exploring the different cultural perspectives and the ever-changing issues that face the world’s population today. Our students drive our passion for the here and now where we must take in to account the patterns and trends exhibited by the students and families that we serve.
Geography is the subject best placed in order to teach students of their relative position of privilege in today’s challenging world. We see this as essential in the development of our student’s sense of empathy being a bedrock for future character development where our students should strive to be seen as the future leaders of our community both at local and global scales.
