Our vision

At Henleaze Infant and Junior Schools, we aim to inspire in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world around them. Our curriculum is ambitious and is designed to ensure that teaching equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural and human environments. As pupils progress through our schools, their growing knowledge about the world will help them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, as well as the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge and skills are progressive and are sequenced to equip our children with a secure, coherent geographical knowledge of their locality, Britain and the wider world.

Our Curriculum

At Henleaze Infant and Junior Schools, we follow the CUSP curriculum. It is cumulative, coherent and connected. In CUSP Early Foundations and Primary Geography, careful thought has been given to how content has been sequenced so that students have the best chance of committing learning to their long-term memory. Concepts have been positioned throughout the long-term sequence so that pupils have the opportunity to revisit them and build on them over time. Vocabulary has been carefully mapped to ensure that pupils acquire the language needed to make sense of these concepts and explain their understanding of core curriculum content.

We define knowledge as being substantive and disciplinary. 

• Substantive concepts focus on locational knowledge, place knowledge, physical and human geography, geographical skills and fieldwork.
• Substantive knowledge is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content. 
• Disciplinary knowledge focuses on skills such as place and space, scale and relationships, the impact of physical and human geography, environment and sustainability, culture and diversity. 

A guiding principle of CUSP Geography is that each study draws upon prior learning. For example, in the EYFS, pupils may learn about People, Culture and Communities or The Natural World through daily activities and exploring their locality and immediate environment. This is revisited and positioned so that new and potentially abstract content in Year 1 can be put into a known location and make it easier to cognitively process. CUSP Geography is built around the principles of cumulative knowledge focusing on spaces, places, scale, human and physical processes with an emphasis on how content is connected and relational knowledge acquired. An example of this is the identification of continents, such as Europe, and its relationship to the location of the UK.

Impact

Each year group has clear cumulative end goals – these are identified for teachers. Each block identifies the core foundational knowledge pupils are to learn. Disciplinary knowledge and opportunities are mapped across the curriculum to a granular depth with learning questions in blocks identifying the precise skill pupils will apply. Monitoring is carried out through unit quizzes and pupil book studies.

Geography overview