Place in geography is a particular position, point, or area in space; a location. Place is defined in terms of what it is like, what happens there and how and why it is changing.

• Every place has a particular location and a unique set of physical and human characteristics. Furthermore, the same place can be represented differently. What we think about places is both shaped by, and shapes, our ‘geographical imagination’. 


• Children will gain knowledge about diverse places, the people who live in them, resources that can be found there and the natural and human environments.


• Children will develop contextual knowledge of the location of globally significant places – both terrestrial and marine – including their defining physical and human characteristics and how these provide a geographical context for understanding the actions of processes.


• Place is a location plus meaning. Location simply describes where a place is on a map whereas place gives more meaning and is more complex. Place is a specific point on earth that is defined by a particular characteristic. 


• Places can be dynamic: they change over time as its physical setting and cultures are influenced by new ideas or technologies.


• Places are physical entities – the town or village where we live – and can be as small as a room in our home or as large as a nation or the Earth. They have physical and human characteristics we can represent in words, pictures and maps.

There are three key components of place: location, locale, and a sense of place. 

• Location is the position of a particular point on the surface of the Earth. 


• Locale is the physical setting for relationships between people, such as the South of France or the Smoky Mountains. 


• A sense of place is the emotions attached to an area based on personal experiences.


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 Scale in geography is defined as the 'zoom lens' that enables us to view places from global to local levels.

Scale influences the way we represent what we see or experience. We can construct different resolutions of scale from the personal, local and regional to the global. 

In between, we have the national and international scales – very important politically, and a huge influence on the identity of individuals and groups. Choice of scale is therefore important in geographical enquiry, as is the realisation that scale resolutions are interconnected.  

• Children will study a range of localities spanning a wide variety of scales from their local school environment to areas in countries far away from their own.  


• Choice of scale is important in geographical enquiry, as is the realisation that scale resolutions are interconnected, as if by a zoom lens. 


• While working within the concept of scale, children will interpret a range of sources of geographical information, including maps, diagrams, globes, aerial photographs and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).  They will study a range of different maps: personal, local, regional, national and international.  A map scale is the map distance ratio that corresponds to the actual ground distance.


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Interdependence in geography explores how the human and physical features of the Earth are interconnected.  Children should have a growing knowledge about the world which helps them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes.

• Children must understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world.  Once they have this knowledge, they will learn how these are interdependent and how they bring about spatial variation and change over time.


• Interdependence is finding out about the impact that people, places or processes have on the natural world and vice versa.


• Interdependence between countries means that they are connected to one another. For example, many developing countries are dependent on developed countries for trade or aid. Developed countries are dependent on developing countries for primary products such as wood and iron.


• Considering interdependence will enhance children’s locational and place knowledge.


• Interdependence has significant influences on the characteristics of places and also considers environmental and human processes. For example, the water cycle, urbanisation or human-induced environmental change, are sets of cause-and-effect interconnections that can operate between and within places.


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Fieldwork

 Fieldwork (whether local, residential or international) is an essential component of geography education. 

It enables pupils to better understand geographical processes and concepts, develop subject knowledge and gain a range of skills that are difficult to develop in the classroom alone.

It allows children the opportunity to experience such things as landscape features, busy urban streets and unfamiliar localities which helps to ground the pupils’ local environment in the context of the global. It also aids motivation and self-development.

By conducting fieldwork, children will experience an enquiry based approach to learning.  They will realise that predictions can be made before the enquiry begins but their findings will be realised through their work in the field.  

Fieldwork also presents children with the opportunity to realise that the world is changing constantly and that their findings are only a snapshot of that moment in the world.  They will be able to use this information to make predictions, explore patterns and consider solutions to problems in the world around them.

Settlements in geography are places where people live and sometimes work.

Types of settlement:

• A hamlet is a very small settlement with just a group of houses.


• A village is also small but may have houses, a primary school, a few shops, a Post Office and a village hall.


• A town is larger than a village, with lots of houses, primary and secondary schools, as well as sometimes having a railway station and shopping centre.


• A city is the largest type of settlement, containing lots of buildings and lots of people. They usually have hospitals, sports facilities, universities, shops, offices, many houses and a cathedral.

Some settlements also have a special use, or function. For example:

• ports - by a river or sea for ships to transport goods


• market towns - where local farmers sell goods


• resorts - for people to go on holiday


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Climate in geography is a description of the average weather conditions in a certain place for the past 30 or so years. Climate is influenced by many different things: how near or far it is from the Equator, how near or far it is from the sea, how high or low the ground is and its position on a continent. The climate across the world has changed naturally over thousands and millions of years. In the past, the UK has experienced both freezing ice ages and warm tropical climates. There are different climate types, for example arid, polar, temperate or tropical. Any place on Earth is within a climate zone, which is an area of similar climate characteristics. Biomes are ‘biological climatic zones’ and they are areas that share similar climate, and vegetation and animal species.

In Geography, children will learn that the Earth’s features have changed over time and this affects the lives of people.

• Children’s growing knowledge about the world should help them to understand the interaction between physical and human processes.  They should understand that these processes have caused the formation of landscapes and environments.  They should therefore realise that the world and its features are changing over time.


• Change occurs at varying rates, at different times and in different places. Some changes are predictable, recurrent or cyclic (the water cycle), while others are unpredictable or erratic. 


• Change can bring about further change.

Physical geography

• Children should gain an understanding about how physical processes are often continual and can cause change. For example, river systems, mountain ranges and coasts.

Human geography

• Children should gain understanding about how places have changed over time and will continue to do so.


• They will know that the people who live in places are not fixed.


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Resource- Any physical material that is needed or has value. 

Sustainability- in geography is a process, resource or state can be maintained at a certain level for as long as is needed. 

Sustainability is the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.

Sustainability is the avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.

Sustainable means an action that can be kept going for ever, something that can continue to be done without it having damaging consequences that might limit that activity in the future.

The concept of sustainability is about the capacity of the environment to continue to support our lives and the lives of other living creatures into the future.