Geography Curriculum at Church Lench CE First School.

Our geography curriculum is designed to ensure clear progression in both knowledge and skills across the school, despite being organised into mixed-age classes. Through a two-year rolling programme (Cycle A and Cycle B), pupils revisit key concepts in different contexts while building on prior learning, ensuring depth, coherence, and full curriculum coverage.

In the Reception and Year 1 class, learning begins with a focus on the pupils’ immediate environment and gradually expands to the wider world. In Cycle A, pupils explore their local area, including the location of the school within the village, houses, and people who help us. This develops early geographical skills such as observation, discussion, and simple mapping. They are also introduced to broader concepts through topics such as seaside locations, where bears live in the world, and cold areas of the world.

In Cycle B, this understanding is extended as pupils learn about where they live in relation to the wider world, including countries in the United Kingdom, as well as the world’s oceans and continents. They begin to use simple map skills and are introduced to Africa, allowing them to develop early locational knowledge beyond their immediate surroundings. This ensures that pupils move from familiar, concrete experiences to a broader, more global perspective.

The EYFS framework is covered in 'Understanding the World'

In Class 2 (Years 2 and 3), pupils build on these foundations by developing a stronger understanding of both physical and human geography, alongside more advanced mapping skills. In Cycle A, topics such as volcanoes, mountains, and earthquakes introduce key physical processes, while the study of settlements and the local area of Evesham deepens pupils’ understanding of how places are organised and function.

In Cycle B, pupils extend their locational knowledge further by studying continents such as North America and Europe. They learn to name and locate countries, including a focused study of Italy and its capital, Rome, enabling them to understand regions within countries. They then make comparisons between Rome and London. Map skills are developed significantly at this stage, including the use of compass points, coordinates, aerial photographs, and more detailed map work. This builds directly on the simple mapping introduced in Key Stage 1 and prepares pupils for more complex geographical enquiry.

In Class 3 (Years 4 and 5), pupils deepen and apply their knowledge at a more advanced level. In Cycle A, they study physical geography in greater depth through rivers, the water cycle, lakes, and deserts, and apply this knowledge to a regional focus on South America, particularly Brazil, alongside rainforest ecosystems. This strengthens their understanding of global environments and human-environment interaction.

In Cycle B, pupils consolidate and extend their locational knowledge of Europe by learning that it is made up of 44 countries, locating a range of these countries and their capital cities, and identifying surrounding seas. Their map skills become more sophisticated, and they apply these in more complex contexts. Pupils also explore global themes such as trade and transport within the United Kingdom and worldwide, as well as understanding time zones and the tropics. These topics require pupils to draw together prior knowledge of continents, countries, and physical processes, supporting higher-level geographical thinking.

Across both cycles and all classes, the curriculum is carefully sequenced to move from the local to the global, and from simple knowledge to more complex concepts and processes. Skills such as map reading, enquiry, comparison, and explanation are revisited and developed progressively. The two-cycle model ensures that pupils encounter new learning while reinforcing prior knowledge, avoiding repetition and supporting long-term retention.

Overall, our curriculum enables pupils to develop as confident geographers with a secure understanding of the world, underpinned by a clear progression of knowledge and skills from Reception through to Year 5.