2024/25

Autumn Term -  Spatial Sense

Year 3/4

The key substantive concept focused on in this unit is location. The key disciplinary understanding in this unit focusses on maps and how we know what is located within a place.

Building on children’s understanding of spatial sense from KS1, this unit builds upon children's prior knowledge of the eight-point compass and grid references before moving on to applying this to their knowledge of the local area.

Children who are in Year 4 will look at grid references and scale twice over two years. This is a purposeful choice as children often find these procedural skills challenging to master and practice will help to achieve this. This unit allows all children to understand grid references and map scale using different maps. 

This unit explores children’s knowledge of the local area and how the local area has changed over time. This unit is a good opportunity to show what children know about their local area and to introduce the idea that places change over time for a number of reasons. To assess their understanding, children are tasked with the task of creating a 'double page spread' to include information about their local area and how it has changed over time. They might include maps, data, graphs or labelled drawings in their description to support their writing.

Year 5/6

The Spatial Sense units in Year 5 and 6 are a culmination of previous learning. If children have gaps in their learning, for example if they struggle with grid references, this unit can be adapted to include opportunities to secure that knowledge.

In this unit, children will look again at lines of longitude and latitude and will learn more about the Prime Meridian and why it was agreed. They will explore coordinates and will use them to identify locations on a map. They will reconnect to their previous learning about map scale and will have opportunities to secure their understanding of calculating distance on a map. As children work through KS2 geography, they will use and apply their geographical skills, such as map reading, using symbols, grid references etc, in many different contexts as they learn about places around the world. Over time, children will get better at the skill of map reading using a wide range of maps as they learn more and remember more of the curriculum.