What children learn about North and South America at KS2
What the national curriculum expects
The Americas appear twice in the KS2 geography curriculum. Under locational knowledge, pupils should locate the world’s countries using maps to focus on Europe and North and South America, concentrating on environmental regions, key physical and human characteristics, countries and major cities. Under place knowledge, pupils should study the human and physical geography of a region within North or South America, alongside a region of the UK and a region in a European country.
Key knowledge and concepts
Within this topic, children build knowledge across the countries, landscapes and people of the Americas:
Countries of the Americas
Locating countries across both continents
Major cities
Where the largest cities are, and why they grew there
Physical features
Mountains, rivers, deserts and coastlines
The Amazon
The rainforest, the river, and why both matter
Environmental regions
How climate and environment vary across the Americas
Studying a region
Looking at one American region in depth
Comparing with the UK
Similarities and differences with life at home
People and settlement
Where people live, and how settlements differ
Where this topic sits within KS2
The National Curriculum doesn’t set a year group. North and South America sit within KS2 locational and place knowledge, and are usually taught alongside or after Europe, since the curriculum asks for a comparable regional study in each.
How to access this topic
North and South America don’t sit on their own in the curriculum. The Cornerstones geography curriculum is fully sequenced from EYFS through Year 1 to Year 6, so you can see what comes before, what follows and how the whole picture fits together. We’ve done the thinking, so your planning time goes into teaching, not sequencing.
Full curriculum
Subject curriculum
Quick Teach Individual lessons and resources for supplementing what you already teach.
Ready to bring the wider curriculum to life?
See how the full Cornerstones Geography Curriculum sequences topics like this one across every year group.