Geography

Subject Area Curriculum Intent

Section 1: Principles at Key Stage 3

In Geography it is our intent for the curriculum to promote in students a curiosity and fascination about the world in which they live and the people who live in it. We want to create interest and understanding about diverse places, people, resources, and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. Students should be confident to understand and ask questions about the world around them and should be confident to take part in discussions about current issues. We want students to be able to know and understand:

• How the planet impacts the way in which humans live
• How humans impact upon the planet on which they live
• How countries differ depending upon different levels of economic development
• Have an awareness of place

The year 7, 8 and 9 curriculum will therefore contain a mix of human and physical topics that will engage the students’ interest, gradually build their geographical skills over time and give opportunities throughout for students’ to develop transferable skills in demand by employers: communication skills (presentation, writing, debating), analytical skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork and problem solving. The geographical skills that will be introduced, and built upon, in Key Stage 3 will include:

• Literacy skills – these will run through all topics with a focus on the use of key geographical terminology and the meaning of command words. There will be a clear emphasis on embedding the ability to describe and explain confidently by the end of the key stage
• Cartographic skills – through the use of atlases and OS maps
• Graphical skills – the ability to draw and interpret a wide range of different graphs
• Numerical skills – to include number, area, scale, proportion, ratio, magnitude and frequency
• Statistical skills – including measures of central tendency, percentages and relationships in data
• Enquiry skills – including opportunities to complete group and individual fieldwork

Formative assessments will introduce the students to exam style questions and summative assessments at the end of topics will continually assess the students’ attainment and progress.

Section 2: Connectedness (linking and co-ordinating)

The core principles of the KS4 curriculum (GCSE) is enquiry based issues (Geography for Enquiring Minds) and the KS3 curriculum will feed into these principles. There will be a focus on routes of enquiry and fieldwork skills throughout the five year course. The intent is to develop a holistic knowledge of the subject at Key Stage 3 in order to create a platform to build on at GCSE. Topics studied at Key Stage 3 will be further developed at Key Stage 4 to deepen their understanding. There will be a focus on exam skills over the five year course to embed the understanding of command words and ingredients of different types of answers. The curriculum will allow students to progress by being interesting and relevant to the students, tracking their progress carefully through formative and summative assessment, providing intervention for students when required.

Section 3: Your subject: five year impact

Geographers will be inspired, motivated and challenged by following a broad, coherent, satisfying and worthwhile course of study. Geography will provides students with the ability to take an interest in the world around them, become involved in key global issues that affect our planet and provide them with the skills that will help them to become successful in their future lives.

Section 4: Teaching and Learning

The geography curriculum is broken down into a number of topics that allow the students to engage with the world around them. These topics are used throughout years 7 to 11 to build the skills that students will need, both to be successful in examinations at the end of year 11, and also successful in their future after education. Strategies that are used to support the students are:

• Glossaries of key terms to allow students to build up their vocabulary and express themselves and their opinions more easily.
• Knowledge organisers summarising key sections of the content with the students set regular work (both practice and flipped learning) to help them engage with this information.
• Questioning and oracy in lessons plays an important role allowing teachers to encourage students to further develop their understanding.
• Writing frameworks which gradually reduce the amount of support the student receives allow students to develop their written style

The teaching and learning principles of the Learning Scientists (Interleaving, Elaboration, Retrieval Practice, Dual Coding, Spaced Practice and Concrete Examples) are at the forefront of helping students to make progress and be successful under exam conditions.

Interleaving: Weekly retrieval practice tasks interleave questions from prior learning and a range of our homework tasks also do the same.

Elaboration: Students are regularly encouraged to extend/develop their understanding through both written work and in discussions

Retrieval Practice: Starter tasks in lessons use a variety of different retrieval practice activities and these are also used alongside flipped learning to encourage students to bring some knowledge into the lesson.

Dual Coding: Arange of ways to present information to make it more accessible to the students is currently being developed.

Concrete Examples: Modelling using writing frames and model answers are embedded throughout the schemes of work. Mnemonics such as GMEX and GCSE are used to help students structure their answers.