Art

Computing

DT

English

French	Geography	History
Maths	Music	PE
PSHE	RE	Science

Intent

At Lethbridge, geography begins at our school gate and widens, circle by circle, to the whole world. We want every pupil to become curious about and fascinated by the places around them, and to leave us knowing how places work, why they matter and how they change.

Our school sits within a Victorian town whose story is a geography lesson in itself. Swindon grew from a small hilltop market town because of how people moved goods and themselves: first by canal, then by Brunel's Great Western Railway, and today through its motor and technology industries and its position on the M4. The railway heritage that once powered the town now draws visitors to it. Pupils are always fascinated by how and why Swindon changed, and this makes it the perfect lens for our four big questions about any place:

1. What is this place like?
   
   
2. Why is it important, and to whom?
   
   
3. How is it changing?
   
   
4. How might it develop in the future?

We start with what pupils can see, touch and walk through. Our neighbouring Victorian park, Town Gardens in Old Town, is our first outdoor classroom. From there, pupils explore Swindon's railway village and canal routes, then Wiltshire's landscapes such as the Avebury henge and stone circles, before carrying those same questions out to the United Kingdom, Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world.

By the time they leave us, we want pupils to have secure, connected knowledge of the world's places and processes, and the practical skills to investigate them. Above all, we want them to become compassionate, responsible and independent thinkers who ask good questions and consider solutions to human and environmental issues, both locally and globally.

Our curriculum is built on the Kapow Primary geography scheme, which covers the full national curriculum, and is adapted so that each unit connects back to Swindon and its surroundings. Learning is organised under the four strands of the national curriculum:

• Locational knowledge
  
  
• Place knowledge
  
  
• Human and physical geography
  
  
• Geographical skills and fieldwork

Our expanding circles

Each phase widens the circle pupils study. Year groups are taught separately, but history and geography run on a two-year cycle, so Years 1 and 2, Years 3 and 4, and Years 5 and 6 learn the same unit at the same time. This lets each pair of year groups share educational visits, and every unit includes fieldwork that returns to our locality, so new places are always compared with one that pupils know well.

Phase	Circle of study	Cycle A	Cycle B	Local fieldwork
EYFS	Our classroom, school grounds and Town Gardens, informing a wider EYFS curriculum	Exploring Maps Term 2&3 Outdoor Adventures Term 4 Around the World Term 5&6	Same units each year	Journey sticks and senses walks in Town Gardens; watching the park change through the seasons
Years 1 and 2	Our street, Old Town, Swindon and the UK	Autumn: What is the weather like in the UK? Spring: What is it like to live in Shanghai? Summer: What can you see at the coast?	Autumn: Where am I? Spring: What is it like here? Summer: Would you prefer to live in a hot or cold place?	Aerial photos of the school and gardens; a playground weather station; a habitat survey in Town Gardens; Old Town high street compared with Shanghai; a coastal visit to Sandbanks, compared with the Jurassic Coast
Years 3 and 4	Wiltshire, UK rivers, the Earth's structure and world biomes	Autumn: Why do people live near volcanoes? (Tremor) Spring: What are rivers and how are they used? Summer: Would you like to live in the desert?	Autumn: Are all settlements the same? Spring: Why are rainforests important to us? Summer: Where does our food come from?	How Swindon grew from market town to railway town; Avebury as an ancient settlement; a Shackleton-style expedition with compasses in Town Gardens; the Wilts and Berks Canal route; a river study at Coleshill; food miles from a local shop
Years 5 and 6	Europe, the Americas and the whole world	Autumn: Who lives in Antarctica? Spring: What is life like in the Alps? Summer: Where does our energy come from?	Autumn: Can I carry out an independent fieldwork enquiry? Spring: Why do oceans matter? Summer: Why does the population change?	A litter pick and beach survey at Clevedon for "Why do oceans matter?"; mapping local tourism (the railway village, the Museum of the Great Western Railway, Avebury World Heritage Site); Swindon's population growth since 1843; siting solar panels on our grounds; an independent enquiry into how our area is changing

EYFS. Children explore the world around them through their senses, stories and simple maps, starting with our classroom, grounds and Town Gardens.

Key stage 1. Pupils build knowledge of the world, the United Kingdom and their locality. They learn basic subject-specific vocabulary for human and physical geography and begin to use geographical skills, including first-hand observation, to strengthen their locational awareness.

Key stage 2. Pupils extend their knowledge beyond the local area to the United Kingdom, Europe, and North and South America. They learn the location and characteristics of a range of the world's most significant human and physical features, and use their knowledge, understanding and skills to deepen their locational and place knowledge.

Our local story

Swindon's growth is a story of transport, and it gives pupils a real place in which to see geography change over time.

• Town Gardens. Opened in 1894 on the site of former Purbeck stone quarries, this Grade II listed Victorian park, with its octagonal bandstand, shows pupils how land use changes, from quarry to public green space.
  
  
• Canals. The Wilts and Berks Canal (early 1800s) and the North Wilts Canal (1819) first linked the small hilltop market town to wider trade routes.
  
  
• The railway. Great Western Railway's Swindon Works opened in 1843. Daniel Gooch chose the site, with Brunel's support, because it sat where lines met. A town of about 2,500 people grew into a railway town with a planned railway village of terraced streets.
  
  
• Heritage and tourism. The Works closed in 1986. Its buildings now house the Museum of the Great Western Railway, a designer outlet and national heritage organisations, and the railway village is a conservation area.
  
  
• Modern links. The former Pressed Steel site is now BMW's MINI plant, and Honda built cars at South Marston from 1985 to 2021. Swindon's position on the M4 still shapes its jobs and its growth today.
  
  
• Wiltshire's landscape. A short journey away, Avebury's henge and stone circles are part of the Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites World Heritage Site, a place to study ancient settlement, landscape and tourism.

How we teach geography

Our teaching is enquiry-led, knowledge-rich and rooted in first-hand experience. It draws on evidence about how pupils learn and remember.

• Enquiry questions. Every unit is framed by a big question, such as "Are all settlements the same?" Pupils build the knowledge to answer it across a sequence of lessons and finish by presenting a reasoned answer.
  
  
• Local first, then global. Each unit starts from or returns to Swindon, so pupils compare the unfamiliar with a place they know well.
  
  
• Planned sequencing. Knowledge and skills build lesson by lesson and year by year towards clear end points. The two-year cycle is mapped so that pupils in both year groups meet every national curriculum objective by the end of each key stage, with the older year group expected to work at greater depth.
  
  
• Revisiting and retrieval. Lessons open with short retrieval tasks that recall earlier learning, and key concepts such as place, space, scale, environment and change return in different contexts so that knowledge sticks in long-term memory.
  
  
• Vocabulary. Subject-specific words from the Kapow vocabulary progression are taught explicitly, displayed and reused. We add local words such as bandstand, canal, junction, railway village, henge and sarsen stone.
  
  
• Oracy. Pupils discuss, explain and debate, using sentence stems to justify their views on geographical issues.
  
  
• Reading and maps. Pupils read maps, atlases, globes, aerial photographs, data and high-quality texts in every unit, and use digital mapping tools to explore places they cannot visit.
  
  
• Clear teaching and checking. Teachers present new knowledge clearly, check understanding throughout lessons, and address misconceptions straight away.
  
  
• Cross-curricular links. Geography connects with history (Swindon's Victorian growth, Shackleton), science (rocks, habitats, the water cycle), maths (data, scale, coordinates) and PSHE (sustainability and citizenship).

Fieldwork and map skills

Fieldwork is central to every geography unit at Lethbridge. Each unit includes at least one fieldwork lesson, and shared visits within the two-year cycle take pupils beyond the school gate. Fieldwork skills progress as follows.

Phase	Where we go	Map and compass skills	Fieldwork methods
EYFS	Classroom, school grounds, Town Gardens	Simple picture maps, following a route	Journey sticks, senses walks, photographs, talking about what they notice
Years 1 and 2	School grounds, Old Town, Town Gardens, the coast at Sandbanks	Aerial photos, simple keys, four compass points, directional language	Observation, tally charts, pictograms, photo journals, simple sketch maps
Years 3 and 4	Old Town, railway village, canal routes, the river at Coleshill, Avebury	Eight compass points, four-figure grid references, Ordnance Survey symbols	Geocaching, land-use surveys, annotated sketches, simple measurements, bar charts
Years 5 and 6	Wider Swindon and Wiltshire, the coast at Clevedon	Six-figure grid references, scale, digital mapping and GIS	Pupils plan their own enquiry, choose methods, collect data, analyse it and present conclusions

Where a unit studies a place pupils cannot visit, such as the Mojave Desert, the fieldwork element uses our locality for comparison, for example measuring microclimates around the school grounds.

Inclusion

Our geography curriculum is an entitlement for every pupil, including disadvantaged pupils and those with SEND.

• Teachers adapt how content is taught, not what is taught, using visuals, pre-taught vocabulary, word banks, models and practical resources.
  
  
• Fieldwork is planned so that every pupil can take part, with routes, recording methods and adult support adjusted where needed.
  
  
• Visits within the two-year cycle mean every pupil experiences places such as Avebury and the railway village first-hand, whatever their background.
  
  
• Pupils can show what they know in different ways, such as through talk, photos, annotated maps or models, as well as in writing.
  
  
• Additional adults help pupils become more independent, so every pupil still benefits from the class teacher's teaching.

Assessment and impact

We measure impact by what pupils know, remember and can do.

• During lessons: questioning, retrieval quizzes and mini-whiteboards show teachers what pupils have understood, and teaching is adjusted straight away.
  
  
• End of unit: pupils answer the unit's enquiry question and complete a short knowledge check against Kapow's end points.
  
  
• Fieldwork outcomes: photo journals, sketch maps, data and presentations show how pupils' fieldwork skills progress over time.
  
  
• Pupil voice: the subject leader talks with pupils about what they remember and how their learning connects.
  
  
• Subject leadership: the subject leader looks at books and fieldwork, visits lessons and uses what they find to refine the curriculum and support staff.

By the end of Year 6, pupils will be able to locate and describe significant places and features from Swindon to the wider world, and explain how physical and human processes shape them. They will be able to plan and carry out their own fieldwork enquiry. They will also speak with confidence and care about how places are changing and how they might develop in the future.