At Robert Miles Junior School we aim to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. Geography enables children to make sense of the world and our Geography curriculum is designed to impart knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and the natural and human environments together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Geographical knowledge, understanding and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and have and will change over time.

At Robert Miles Junior School we believe geography as a discipline seeks to answer fundamental questions about the world and must foster in children their own enquiry into the future of the world and their impact on it. This makes enquiry led learning, through the use of enquiry questions, the fundamental element at the heart of our geography pedagogy.

 For children to answer these enquiries they need substantive geographical knowledge and topic specific vocabulary. The scope and possibility of geography to understand, perceive and influence the world can only be accessed with adequate substantive knowledge and the vocabulary to interpret and explain. Therefore, our curriculum is knowledge rich, ambitious and progressive.

Our curriculum builds on KS1 learning with locational and place knowledge, studies into human and physical geography and experience of map work and fieldwork skills at a local level into a broader, national, continental and global level. Pupils investigate with increasingly challenging enquiry questions in our unit topics with lessons focussing on one of four leading ‘lenses’ of space and scale, physical features, human features and change and sustainability. We hope that with this progression pupils are ready not only for the curriculum of KS3 but also their increasing engagement and independence in the world. 

 The final element of geography at RMJS is that map use and field work are fundamental elements of geographical practice and essential to deepen children’s understanding. This is developed through unit content and explicit focus in whole school field work that gives children the opportunity for the ‘see’ and ‘do’ of geography and provides rich added value to their geography study.