Geography
Our Vision
At White Cliffs Primary and Nursery School, we believe that, through the study of geography, we can help our pupils understand the world in which they live through the ideas of place, space and environment.
Through our geography curriculum we hope that pupils will understand their role within the world, by exploring locality and how people fit into a global structure. The subject also encourages children to learn through experience, particularly through practical and fieldwork activities.
The geography curriculum is designed and constantly adapted to meet the needs and interests of all children from Nursery to Year 6. Within our EYFS settings, geography is taught through the area of 'Understanding the World' from Development Matters and is used to develop the idea of place and the local area.
Within our geography teaching we develop the essential skills and understanding which are the building blocks for later life, such as increasing awareness, knowledge and understanding of other cultures and developing graphic skills, including how to use, draw and interpret maps.
We recognise and appreciate the importance of our local area and our curriculum provides a wealth of opportunities for children to be immersed and engaged in fieldwork, such as river dipping and observing life in the River Dour to visiting the White Cliffs to monitor and observe coastal erosion. These opportunities are carefully mapped across year groups to allow all children to develop an awareness of local environmental problems. Often these opportunities are supported by outside organisations and charities, such as Kent Wildlife Trust, White Cliffs Countryside Partnership and Global Action Fund.
Primary Geography Quality Mark 2025
In September 2025, White Cliffs Primary and Nursery School were awarded the Primary Geography Quality Mark at a Bronze Level.
This accreditation celebrates the incredible geography that is taught and the amazing experiences offered within the school. Throughout last year, lots of geography opportunities were planned for all the children, these include working with local organisations on community projects and visits into the local area. We are now commited to continue to develop our geography curriculum further this year.
Location & Place Knowledge
At White Cliffs are children have opportunities in all year groups to deepen their understanding and knowledge of their local area as well as comparing it to global locations. Each year group participates in a local area study exploring our school grounds, areas within Dover, new developments in our town and some further localities such as Canterbury and Botany Bay.
Having a solid understanding of our locality and positioning within the world helps the children to draw similiarities and comparisons with other towns, cities and countries. Within our termly topics, the children learn about different places and locations in the world such as Greece, Rome, Eygpt, Mexico and Kenya.
Year 4- Greece
The children in Highland Cow and Moorhen Classes have been exploring Greece and it's islands as part of their Ancient Greece topic. It is important for the children to know and understand what the country is like, look at the human and physical features, what life is like for the people who currently live there before they can use this knowledge to compare historically. The classes looked at the physical geography of Greece before learning the events of ancient battles to better understand the make up of the country. The compared the size and terrain of the coastline to where we live and drew comparisons between climates and cultures.
Year 3- Eygpt
To begin their term 1 topic of ancient Eygpt, Rabbit class located the country in different atlases, explored the human and physical features and spent time looking at the importance of the River Nile. They explored the Nile in an immersive and creative lesson where they plotted the ancient landmarks that were located along the river and discussed what the river would have been used for during ancient times. This location knowledge provided the children with an understanding of what the climte, life and geography of the country was like.
The places we have visited.
As a school we wanted to discover the different places the children in our school had visited, whether close to home or further afield. We collated each classes adventures and made a White Cliffs Place Cloud. We hope to add and update this each year.
Fieldwork and Map Skills
Across each year group the children explore a local area study. Within these studies the children learn, develop, practise and apply a range of fieldwork techniques. The studies this year include:
Reception- Our school grounds
Year 1- St Radigunds and Dover
Year 2- Dover and the seafront area
Year 3- Whitfield development
Year 4- River Dour
Year 5- Canterbury
Year 6- Dover castle/Botany Bay
Year 4- trip to St Andrews Church
As part of their trip to the church, Year 4 classes returned to the classroom to make a messy map of the route they walked. They paid close attention to road names, the buildings around them and features such as bus stops, train bridges etc. They then used this hands on and visual representation to draw a sketch map.
Sustainability & Community
Sustainability and the environment are incredibly important to the children at White Cliffs. They have become very passionate about making a difference to their local area and reducing their impact on the world around them.
Gardening Club
Our popular gardening club runs every term and is open to all year groups. The children enjoy taking ownership of our school garden and vegetable patches; maintaining and tidying the beds, growing new plants and vegetables and harvesting their grown produce. The children take immense pride in their garden and have started to share their harvested produce with the school kitchen to offer the children different salad bar options and vegetables at lunchtime.
Eco Club
Our Eco-Club was established last year from a select group of KS2 children and Jenny Luddington from the Kent Wildlife Trust. The group took part in the Blue Influencers scheme which supports young people to influence positive change in their "blue" coastal environments. The children secured a £560 grant from the Ernest Cook Trust to fund a series of local area projects. The children chose to spend their grant on a storytelling workshop with Barry from Dover Tales who taught them the importance of the local River Dour in a fun and immersive way. They then visited the Western Heights Nature Reserve and worked with Lauren from White Cliffs Countryside Project to explore the different wildlife living within our local green spaces and then created amazing haperzome artwork using the natural dyes from items they had foraged.
This year the Eco-Club are continuing their work with Jenny and the Blue Influencers scheme. A new group of children, led by our two Year 6 Eco Warriors and Mrs Cox, are working to secure a huge £5000 grant to fund building a school pond on our field. This will encourage and support the local wildlife that inhabitat the nature reserve behind our school site but will also be a fantastic addition to our Opal Play offer.
Global Action Fund
Last year our Year 5 classes worked with Liz Hayes from Global Action. The children discussed their concerns and worries for both the environment and the local community which led them to lead 5 social action campaigns. The children split into groups based on the social concern they were worried about and conducted litter picks, created pencil cases for refugees, built bird boxes to encourage the local wildlife, raised money for the homeless with a cake sale and grew vegetables in our garden to donate to the food bank.
The project allowed the children and the school to work with a variety of local charities and organisations such as Dover Food Bank and Kent Refugee Action Network, as well as allowing the children to make a difference to causes they believe and feel passionately about.
