Building Understanding of Coasts In KS1 & KS2

One of the reasons I’m so passionate about building a high-quality history and geography curriculum is the positive impact that building a wide vocabulary has on children’s achievement, particularly in English. It’s important to deliberately plan the development of this, rather than leaving it to chance[1]. Coasts is an area I’ve thought about a lot, as there’s a significant amount of tricky vocabulary linked to this topic, which can be difficult for children to understand, particularly if they rarely visit the seaside. In this blog I set out how knowledge of coasts progresses throughout KS1 & 2, and some suggestions as to how this can be effectively embedded within the curriculum, including text suggestions.

Key Stage One

In KS1, children should be taught the following words – beach, cliff, coast, port & harbour[2]. In order to ensure that children secure these words in their long-term memory, it’s important that they experience them several times throughout Years 1 & 2, in different contexts[3]. There are many excellent picture books with seaside settings – a personal favourite is Jack & Nancy by Quentin Blake[4]. Does your KS1 English curriculum include texts containing these words? If not, it’s worth considering whether any could be added, either as part of English lessons or as storytime reads. If teachers are aware of the reasons for including these texts, they can ensure to briefly discuss the above words and the relevant illustrations so that they are emphasised to the children.

Some valuable geography activities would be including coastal features, such as the White Cliffs of Dover and the Giant’s Causeway, when learning about the countries, capital cities and seas of the UK, and asking children to trace the coastline with their finger each time they use a UK or world map. You could also explore the ports at each of the UK’s capital cities, and the different types of ship that use ports and harbours. In addition to including this vocabulary in geography units where appropriate, a good opportunity to further reinforce it would be including coastal habitats during the Year 2 Living Things and their Habitats science unit. If you teach a history topic on changes in transport over time, you could include ships and ports here too.

Key Stage Two

Before I look more closely at the teaching of coasts in KS2, I think it would be useful to summarise what is included in the KS3 NC.

KS3 Geography NC:

Pupils should be taught to understand, through the use of detailed place-based exemplars at a variety of scales, the key processes in rocks, weathering and soils and coasts

So coastal processes are taught in KS3 – this is important to note, as we must be wary of accidentally encroaching on the KS3 curriculum in KS2, causing difficulties with secondary transition and taking up time in our already packed timetables unnecessarily. If you’d like to find out more about what is taught in KS3, the below link could be a good place to start:

Coasts – KS3 Geography – BBC Bitesize

If we’re not teaching coastal processes, what should we be teaching in KS2? Here are the relevant NC objectives.

KS2 Geography NC:

Pupils should be taught to name and locate key topographical features of the United Kingdom, including hills, mountains, coasts and rivers

Pupils should be taught to describe and understand key aspects of physical geography, including rivers

Pupils should be taught to describe and understand key aspects of human geography, including types of settlement and land use, economic activity including trade links and the distribution of natural resources including energy

Note that the only explicit mention of coasts in the National Curriculum is in the first objective, which refers to naming and locating coasts of the United Kingdom. However, coasts and related vocabulary will likely be included in the teaching of the other objectives listed above; links explained in further detail below:

• Naming and locating coasts (and coastal features such as cliffs, caves and peninsulas) should be included in all UK geography units.
• When learning about rivers, the journey of a river ends at the sea, with estuaries being a coastal feature. Additionally, you are likely to introduce erosion when learning about rivers – while this does not need to be explicitly taught in geography relating to coasts, it’s useful preparation for KS3. You may well also include erosion when teaching children about sedimentary rocks in Year 3.
• When learning about land use and economic activity, children should learn about seaside tourism, leisure, industries such as the fishing industry and transport (including the role of docks in foreign travel for example).
• When learning about trade, children should learn about the role of ships and ports. If they have learnt about changes in transport over time in KS1, this is a useful link.
• When learning about sources of energy, in particular renewable energy, children should learn about the use of wind turbines.

Knowledge of coasts can also be developed through the following geography units:

• During studies of regions in the UK, Europe and North or South America, and when locating world countries (with a focus on Europe, North and South America) locate the coastlines of the countries encountered during atlas activities. Finding each country in the atlas and asking the children to trace the coastline with their finger is a good routine to develop every time you learn about a new country. Aidan Severs describes the approach of revisiting prior knowledge through a number of key questions every time you learn about a new place further in this blog:

Geography: Key Questions To Ask When Learning About A Place (aidansevers.com)

• Learning about significant coastal features in Europe, North & South America, particularly where these link to other areas of the curriculum eg. Mont St. Michel, the Norwegian fjords or the Galapagos Islands.

Where there are links to topics in other subjects, these should also be capitalised upon. For example, when learning about ancient Greece, knowledge of vocabulary such as archipelago and islands will be relevant, as well as understanding the importance of fishing to the ancient Greeks.

Finally, I think it’s important we consider the vocabulary our children will need to develop in order to become successful readers, and to adequately prepare them for the secondary curriculum. I’ve created a (probably not exhaustive) list of words I would suggest children should recognise, understand and use by the end of Year 6. Please let me know if you think I’ve missed anything important.

Physical features – ocean, sea, coast, beach, shore, cliff, sand dune, rockpool, cave, archipelago, island, headland, peninsula, fjord, bay, estuary, coastline

Human features – harbour, port, quay, dock, wharf, quayside, pier, promenade, breakwater, sea wall, sea front, causeway

Adjectives – coastal, maritime, marine

Children should also be able to spell the following words:

Year 3/4 spelling list – island

Year 5/6 spelling list – leisure, yacht

To achieve this, in addition to including mentions of coasts in the units above, you could plan a series of reading activities designed to build vocabulary throughout the key stage. I’ve described a variety of ways in which this could be done in my previous post on using reading to build knowledge across the curriculum[5]. As I mentioned in relation to the KS1 stories, if teachers are aware of the vocabulary they are aiming to develop, they can draw attention to the relevant words while reading these texts. Here are some of my particular favourites, but I’m sure you can think of many more:

Years 3 & 4 – Arthur and the Golden Rope, The Mousehole Cat, When Jessie Came Across The Sea

Years 5 & 6 – Room 13, The Giant’s Necklace, Tentacle Boy

Coasts epic booklist.docx – Google Docs A selection of free books to read on http://www.getepic.com, both fiction and non-fiction.

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[1] See Andrew Percival’s excellent explanation of prototype theory in relation to building a secure understanding of key concepts here Microsoft Word – Banishing misconceptions with prototype theory.docx (weebly.com)

[2] KS1 Geography NC:

Pupils should be taught to use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to key physical features, including beach, cliff, coast

Pupils should be taught to use basic geographical vocabulary to refer to key human features, including port & harbour

[3] As described in this series of blogs https://mrssteaches.school.blog/2020/02/01/primary-history-geography-curriculum-decision-making-part-1/

[4] Jack and Nancy – The Teachers’ Collection – Stories to support curriculum planning (theteacherscollection.com)

[5] https://mrssteaches.school.blog/2023/04/10/using-reading-to-build-knowledge-across-the-curriculum/