What children learn about climate and climate change at KS2
What the national curriculum expects
The KS2 geography curriculum names climate zones, biomes and vegetation belts as part of physical geography, asking pupils to describe and understand how they vary across the world. Climate change itself isn’t a specifically named requirement in the curriculum’s wording, but understanding it is a natural extension of climate zones knowledge, and most schools treat it as an essential part of teaching this topic well.
Key knowledge and concepts
Within this topic, children build knowledge across how climate shapes the world, and how it’s changing:
Climate zones
The world's major climate zones, and what shapes them
Biomes
Distinct ecological communities shaped by climate
Vegetation belts
How plant life changes from one climate to another
Weather and climate
The difference between short-term weather and long-term climate
Polar regions
The Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and the environments that define them
Climate change
How the climate is changing, and its effects on people and places
Extreme weather
Its causes, and its impact on communities around the world
Protecting environments
Natural resource management, and what's being done
Where this topic sits within KS2
Climate isn’t taught as a single unit in one year group. It builds progressively across KS2, from an early introduction to climate zones through to a deeper look at climate change and its effects by upper KS2.
How to access this topic
Climate and climate change doesn’t sit on its 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.