Geography Year 1

Our Year 1 geography curriculum provides a framework to enrich children’s awareness and understanding of spatial sense, and local, national and global geography. Our curriculum introduces Year 1 pupils to key geographical concepts beginning with their immediate surroundings and expanding to the UK and the British Isles before introducing them to the Seven Continents. We aim for Year 1 children to begin to develop an understanding of the subject discipline of geography, to be able to draw simple maps and to begin to accurately locate places around the UK and the world.

Through the PKC, pupils gain a strong foundation of knowledge about the world around them. They locate places, learn about those locations and how they relate to surrounding areas. Our Year 1 geography curriculum begins with a ‘Spatial Sense’ unit that teaches vital conceptual understanding of aerial views and introduces children to map work. Children then go on to study the UK before learning about the Seven Continents of the world. This knowledge will be built upon in Year 2 when children study maps of the local area, the British Isles and Northern Europe. Importantly, in Year 1 children are learning rich vocabulary that will help them to understand and communicate effectively in geography.

Our Year 1 geography curriculum introduces pupils to the following units:

• Spatial sense
• The UK
• The Seven Continents

We equip our partner schools with the necessary resources to effectively teach the PKC geography Year 1 curriculum to their pupils. Resources include lesson plans, curriculum maps, subject overviews, and subject and unit rationales.

Alongside the above resources, we provide every PKC Geography teacher with:

• Geography subject knowledge resources on each lesson plan
• Knowledge organisers for each unit
• Assessment and multiple choice quizzes
• Access to CPD training and resources
• Key vocabulary database and people databases

To gain a better understanding of the geography curriculum, we encourage all geography subject leaders to attend our “Dive into geography” CPD series. These sessions include six pre-recorded videos followed by a live session with our curriculum team. By attending this session you will be able to apply our geography curriculum with confidence within your schools.