Geography at YWJS
Geography Statement of Intent
Resilient Respectful Inspired Curious
Geographers at Yeadon Westfield Junior School
Geography inspires in children a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people. We teach Geography with the aim of equipping children with knowledge about people, resources, natural and human environments, in Yeadon and around the world. We also aim to inspire and inform children with knowledge about diverse places around our exciting world, in ways that is meaningful and relevant to them.
As children progress through YWJS, their growing knowledge will help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of different landscapes. Each year, children build on their developing geographical skills and show confidence and resilience in a range of skills such as map reading, comparing and contrasting a range of places in the world and securing place and locational knowledge as they go. Geography skills such as map reading, and orienteering are supported in PE lessons and on the school residential. Place and locational knowledge are supported during themed weeks such as Fairtrade Fortnight where children use maps to identify where key Fairtrade foods are grown.
By the end of Key Stage 2 at YWJS, our aim is that children will leave with the geographical knowledge, understanding and skills that allows them to explain how the Earth’s features, both in their local area and places further away from Yorkshire, are shaped, interconnected and changed over time. As their knowledge and respect of our world grows so will their ability to challenge, question and reflect on their own viewpoints. It is our wish for children to have a strong knowledge of place and location, as well as become globally aware of their impact on the planet, taking responsibility for their actions in an ever-changing world.
Yeadon Westfield Junior School Geography Policy 2021-2024
Spring Term 2024 - Year 6 - North American Studies
• Making homemade baked beans around the campfire. (Almost everyone helped make and eat the baked beans.) They tasted great!
• Making dream catchers - the native Americans believed that a dream catcher web could ward off bad dreams and evil spirits.
• Totem poles - each tribe would have had their own totem pole carved from a tree to represent their morals, values and families or important animals. We had a go with clay at making our own figures and stacking them up to make totem poles.
• Making talking sticks - an important part of native American democracy - the talking stick was held by the chief to command respect and passed around to allow everyone to have a voice in turn at community meetings
• Navajo design - The native Navajo tribe create to this day geometric rugs in eye-catching designs. We had a go at designing our own.
In the afternoon, we planted potatoes and onions to grow ready to harvest later in the year.
Spring 2024 - Year 5 - Geographical Muddy Puddle Day
Spring Term 2024 Year 3 Physical Geography: What is the structure of the Earth?
Spring Term 2024 - Year 4 - Creative Writing (Mountains)
Spring Term 2024 - Year 5 - Physical geography: Where do earthquakes occur? We investigated tectonic plates and where earthquakes happen across the world.
2022-23
Summer Term 2023 - Year 5 - Biodiversity and fieldwork
1 - Biodiversity audit of the school grounds. We used a map of YWJS school grounds to find human and physical features.
2 - We then examined the biodiversity of one area of the school grounds by placing a quadrat in that area. We sketched the area, created a tally chart of what we saw and used magnifying glasses to find out more information.
3 - We re-designed the nature garden to maximise biodiversity, remembering the importance of making it pollinator friendly.
4 - In the afternoon we put our gardening skills to work and updated the nature garden, adding new flower beds and redesigning the bug hotels to improve the biodiversity of our school grounds.
Summer Term 2023 - Year 4 - Global Waste Reduction
Summer Term 2023 - Year 5 Geography Field Trip
Summer Term 2023 - Year 3 - Geographical Muddy Puddle Day
We then conducted a survey of the frequency in colour of cars that passed our school. It was quite tricky to keep a count, so we used a tally table to record our results and then answered questions relating to our findings, back in the classroom, we drew a bar chart.
Summer Term 2023 - Year 4 - Visit To Nell Bank (Rivers)
Summer Term - Geography displays across the school
Year 4 Muddy Puddle day Spring 2 2023 - Mountains
The children enjoyed exploring how mountains are made through a series of investigations. They explored erupting bags of icing for volcanic mountains, breaking chocolate crispie bars up to replicate fault block mountains, bending and folding card/paper to form fold mountains, plateau mountains created using water and sand to represent valleys created and dome mountains formed by blowing up a balloon.
Year 5 - Earthquakes - Spring term 2023. Finding out about tectonic plates.
Year 5 - Earthquakes - Spring term 2023 Earthquake inspired art during Muddy Puddle day.
2021-2022
Summer Term 2022 - Year 4 - What is Geography?
Year 3 Yorkshire Summer 2022
"In our Yorkshire topic we have learnt about different settlements. I know that a hamlet is just a small group of houses, a village has houses and a small amount of shops, a town has churches, railway stations and lots more shops and a city has football stadiums, sky scrapers and shopping centers. I have enjoyed learning about Yorkshire!" Cruz 3B
"I enjoyed learning about geographical features in Yorkshire and the UK. It was fun sorting the different places in to human and natural features. A natural feature is Durdle Door, and a human feature is Edinburgh Castle." Evelyn 3L
Year 3 Yorkshire topic work
Year 4 Rivers & Coasts Summer 2022
"I enjoyed locating where rivers are by using an atlas and plotting them on my own map." Sophie 4K
"I learnt what erosion means and how the weather and climate change can change the course of a river." Amelia 4K
"I know what coasts are now and we spent a lesson locating beaches around the UK." Holly 4I
Year 4 Rivers & Coasts topic work
Year 5 Brazil Summer 2022
"In our Brazil topic, I have enjoyed comparing the human and physical features of Leeds with Rio de Janeiro. A human feature of Leeds is our school, and a human feature of Rio de Janeiro is Christ the Redeemer." Isla 5H
"I really enjoyed learning what a biome is. We spent a lesson comparing different biomes. I know that the Amazon Rainforest is a type of biome." Michael 5A
Year 5 Brazil topic work
Year 6 Europe Summer 2022
"I enjoyed researching natural features in Europe. I learnt that the tallest mountain in Europe is in Russia called Mount Elbrusi." Heidi 6M
"I learnt about human features in Europe. I researched the Eiffel Tower and found out that it has a secret scientific laboratory inside it!" Jacob 6G
Year 6 Europe Topic Summer 2022
Year 6 took part in a great practical lesson to secure our knowledge of the countries and capital cities in Europe. We played 'rounders' where we rotated round tables in our classroom to contribute to annotating blank maps of Europe. By the end we successfully located all the countries and capital cities in Europe as a whole class team!
Year 6 Europe topic work
Year 5 Earthquakes topic
Year 5 Earthquakes topic work
Spring Term 2022 - Class 4I - A Simulated Mountain Rescue
Spring Term 2022 - Class 4I - Mountain Climbing Debate
Year 4 Mountains topic work
Spring Term 2022 - Year 3 - What Makes The Earth Angry?
Year 3 Volcanoes topic work
Year 6 North America topic work
Autumn Term 2021 - Year 6 - COP26
Follow the link below to have a look at the wonderful 'Our Powerful Planet' Thing in the Hall project, focusing on geography.
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Y4 Mighty Mountains
As part of our topic on Mighty Mountains, we used an Atlas to locate the major Mountain formations around the world and label these on our own paper copy of the world map.
Year 3 Locating places on a map
As part of our topic on Ancient Egypt, we used an Atlas to locate the United Kingdom and Egypt. We then took a closer look at Egypt and drew our own maps with the River Nile, Upper and Lower Egypt and some of the key features of this country.
Summer Term 2021 - Year 6 - Yorkshire
Summer Term 2021 - Class 5A - Bustling Brazil
Summer Term 2021 - Year 4 River and Sea Erosion
Spring 2021 - Class 5A - Earthquake Studies
Spring 2021 Year 4 - Geography/PE
The children created a scenario where the team would have to venture into the mountains to rescue someone and then they had to take an object (an injured person) across a mountain range (obstacle course in the hall) without dropping/injuring the person!
Spring 2021 - Year 3 - Geography - The Structure of the Earth
We have been exploring Volcanoes, answering the questions: What are the layers of the Earth? How are Volcanoes formed? What are the different kinds of Volcanoes? Where are volcanoes located around the world? We then created our own mini Earths with multiple layers using plasticine. We cut into it so we could identify all those layers.
Autumn 2020 Year 3 developing mapping skills in their PE Orienteering lessons.
Year 3 - Volcanoes
Mount Vesuvius erupts!
Year 3 had a visit from Flavia, a time traveller from Pompeii who survived the eruption of Vesuvius. In our English, we then looked at the time line of when and how Vesuvius erupted and had a go at some still improvisation of our own reactions to each phase of the eruption. It was quite a day!
Year 4 link their mountains work to making avalanche survival shelters in Design and Technology.
Year 5 – Earthquakes. Year 5 built on their map working skills and also learnt all about plate tectonics and their locations around the world.
'You can travel the seas, poles and deserts and see nothing. To really understand the world you need to get under the skin of the people and places. In other words, learn about geography. I can't imagine a subject more relevant in schools. We'd all be lost without it'
Michael Palin