"Geography is the subject which holds the key to our future."

-Michael Palin

 

Curriculum Vision

Geography is in essence a passport to life. Geography provides ‘Powerful Knowledge’ while inspiring pupils to become successful global citizens by exploring their own place in the world, their values and responsibilities to other people, to the environment and to the sustainability of the planet.

Key Stage 3

Year 7

In Year 7 pupils will be extending their locational knowledge and deepening their spatial awareness of the world’s regions. Pupils will be studying key aspects of physical and human geographies in order to learn about distinctive landscapes and how places differ around the world. Pupils will develop geographical skills such as reading maps across a range of scales, interpreting photographs and analysing data to identify geographical patterns and processes.

Enrichment – Pupils also go on a fieldtrip in the summer term.

Year 8

In Year 8 pupils will study a wide variety of physical and human topics which will build on year 7, with a continuing focus on extending pupils locational knowledge and deepening their spatial awareness of the world’s regions. There is once again a key thread of UK geography running through the year.
Key topics will include settlement; demographics; coasts and biomes; and a key topic about climate change. Pupils will build on their conceptual understanding throughout the year.

We will discuss concepts such as sustainability, culture, space, place, and scale (both national and global) and develop graphical, statistical and cartographic skills.

Enrichment – Pupils also go on a fieldtrip in the spring term.

Year 9

In year 9 pupils build on what they learnt in years 7 and 8. There is a greater focus on learning through enquiry in year 9, where pupils will be challenged to look for synoptic links in each of the topics they study. Once again pupils will continue to deepen their knowledge of the world at a range of scales, while debating the key issues that humans will be tackling in the future.

Key Stage 4

 

At KS4, pupil study the Edexcel B GCSE Geography specification.

Pupils build on the knowledge and skills learnt at KS3, when undertaking the contemporary, interesting and thought-provoking two year GCSE course. Fieldwork is also introduced as an essential component to embed a culture of learning outside of the classroom in a ‘real-world’ context. During the Physical Geography, and Human Geography fieldtrips pupils are able to gather primary data to support the enquiry process and allow them to reach evidence based conclusions. The fieldwork is assessed as part of their Paper 2 examination.

By the end of KS4 the Department believes that our learners will have developed into inspirational global citizens and leaders.
GCSE examinations taken at the end of Year 11 are:

Paper 1: Global Geographical Issues
(1 hour and 30 minutes)

 

• Topic 1: Hazardous Earth
• Topic 2: Development dynamics
• Topic 3: Challenges of an urbanising world

Paper 2: UK Geographical Issues
(1 hour and 30 minutes)

 

• Topic 4: The UK’s evolving landscape - including sub-topics 4A: Coastal change and conflict and 4B: River processes and pressures
• Topic 5: The UK’s evolving human landscape - including a Case Study on Dynamic UK cities
• Topic 6: Geographical investigations - including one physical and one human fieldwork investigation linked to Topics 4 and 5

Paper 3: People and Environment Issues - Making Geographical Decisions
(1 hour and 30 minutes)

 

• Topic 7: People and the biosphere
• Topic 8: Forests under threat
• Topic 9: Consuming energy resources