Geography

In Geography students in years 7 and 8 have 3 x100-minute lessons per fortnight, and in Year 9 students have x2 100-minute lessons per fortnight.  

These are the units of work that students will study in Key Stage 3: 

	Unit 1	Unit 2	Unit 3	Unit 4	Unit 5
Year 7	Geography Skills	Rivers	Development	The Middle East	Fieldwork Skills
Year 8	Population	Tectonics	Coasts	Africa	Fieldwork Skills
Year 9	Climate Change	Emerging Economies	The Living World	The Living World	Fieldwork Skills

 

All students in Key Stage 3 follow an ambitious curriculum that challenges them to build on their prior learning to embed and develop what they already know. 

The curriculum in Key Stage 3 ensures that students have the knowledge and understanding of the traditional pillars of the subject so that by the time they reach Key Stage 4 they can apply this knowledge to begin to tackle some of the complex questions, and inter-relationships explored.  

In Key Stage 4 we follow the AQA GCSE Geography syllabus, which is structured to cover three main components, all of which are examined in three exam papers at the end of Year 11.   

Paper 1: Physical Geography 

Students study three units within this sphere of the subject which include: 

• Unit 1 – The challenge of natural hazards 

• Unit 2 – The living world 

• Unit 3 – Physical landscapes in the UK 

Paper 2: Human Geography 

Students study three units within this sphere of the subject which include: 

• Unit 1 – Challenges in the human environment 

• Unit 2 – The changing economic world 

• Unit 3 – The challenge of resource management 

Paper 3: Geographical applications and fieldwork 

• Section A – Issue Evaluation 

The Issue Evaluation element is based on a pre-release booklet which is about a different geographical issue each year. Students are required to study the issue and make a choice about the issue they have been presented with and expected to justify their decision using the information and resources that have been made available to them, and their own knowledge from other areas of the GCSE Geography course.  

• Section  B – Fieldwork  

Students undertake a field trip to complete a physical and a human geographical enquiry. In the exam, students are asked questions relating to their own fieldwork and about unseen fieldwork to ensure that they have a good grasp of the aims and objectives of fieldwork and the different methods that can be used to collect and present data. 

In Key Stage 3, students are regularly assessed throughout the unit to check for understanding and mastery of the topic,  before completing a final assessment at the end of the whole unit. At the end of the year, students sit an end of year exam in which they are assessed on the compulsory units of issued by United Learning.  These summative assessments allow students to demonstrate their growing knowledge and understanding of the units that they have studied in their Geography lessons.  

By the end of Year 9, through teaching the common Geography units and the extra optional units, students understand what it is to be a Geographer. They will have a curiosity and fascination in learning about the world in which they live in and what different places and countries are like. Students will have a holistic understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected, and how physical and human environments are interrelated. Our students will have an  extensive core of geographical knowledge and vocabulary, and will be able to communicate this, in a variety of ways routinely. They will also be able to carry out increasingly complex, independent geographical enquiries and demonstrate an ability to ask their own questions, use different data sets and think critically about their own and others’ views to help reach conclusions.   

Our curriculum enables students to know more and remember more as they progress through the school Students access prior learning that is embedded into  new topics and have regular exposure to key geographical knowledge via knowledge organisers and regular low stake quizzes. Low stake quizzes help students to remember more and apply more as the curriculum progresses.  

At the end of each unit students undertake classroom  assessments. At the end of the academic year students sit a formal  exam. The benefit of these assessments is that students can gain a better understanding of their performance as part of a larger cohort.  This also enables our department, and the academy to consider student performance against national  benchmarks enabling appropriate intervention.   

In  geography we work to ensure that students are competent in literacy and numeracy by integrating numeracy and literacy tasks into our lessons. These are planned and shown in  our learning maps for each topic in KS3-KS5.   

We strive to ensure that all students leave our academy as wel rounded individuals who have a sound knowledge and understanding of the world we live in and enable them to become global citizens who will make a positive contribution to our ever-changing Earth.