Year 1 Geography Field Work: At the Park
A few years ago, we re-wrote our geography curriculum and sequenced the children’s learning differently, so that they had the opportunity to revisit themes, building on prior learning with new topics.
In Year R, we start with subjects which link directly to the children’s lived experiences, such as where they live, places they visit and journeys they make regularly. The children learn about the seasons throughout the year, relating this to the clothes we wear, and how this impacts our daily lives. They also learn about maps. They talk about familiar places and describe routes that they know.
In Year 1, the children learn about the countries, capitals and seas of the United Kingdom. In the summer term, they visit the Field of Remembrance to apply their understanding of human and physical features. During our recent field trip, the children collected information which they made into pictograms back at school, to represent who we saw visiting the park. We talked about the different groups of people who use the park and had an interesting discussion about additional features which would make our local park even better; amongst these were a helter-skelter slide, a sandpit, a tennis court, a swimming pool and a skate park!
In Year 2, the children apply new knowledge to consider the question, “Is Windlesham a good place to live?” This enables the children to consider what is desirable in a location and then gather information to evaluate whether Windlesham can offer that level of amenities; we have a rich discussion about what our village has to offer!