Geography
Curriculum Aims
Geography is a crucial foundation subject within the school curriculum that enables students to develop a curiosity and fascination of the world around them that empowers students to question and act. It is an essential subject to equip students as responsible global citizens with the right knowledge, understanding and skills fit for the modern world to better understand the past, present and possible future. It also acts as a bridging subject connecting both to the arts and sciences with many of the topics covered having significant cross-curricular links and enriches the cultural capital within students.
Students are able to gain meaningful knowledge about diverse people, places, natural and human environments along with a deep understanding of the impacts of key physical and human processes that exist around us. Geography covers features and processes operating at and across a variety of scales, which is why students begin by focusing on local geography before then broadening their learning to consider national and international themes and case studies. The curriculum has been designed so that it helps students to understand their place in the world and understand current and past social, cultural, economic and environmental events along with helping students to address the big global challenges that the world faces in the 21stCentury.
Key Stage 3 Curriculum Overview
Lessons have a strong focus on reading and writing along with emphasising key terminology to develop scientific and social literacy. All students at Key Stage 3 receive a free Humanities literacy guide. As students progress at Key Stage 3, there is an expectation students should be able to write in more depth and with greater fluency and accuracy using more complicated, specialist technical language to reflect greater mastery of the subject. Competent geographers also need proficiency in a range of geographical skills from map-reading to interpreting graphical information, to interpreting a range of sources of geographical information to data presentation, which is built into planning. The curriculum is delivered in a way that develops important geographical skills every step of the way along with expanding the scale of study along with the breadth and depth of content.
There are between three or four units to be studied each year at Key Stage 3:
Year 7: Maps Skills; Settlements; Rivers, Coasts and Flooding and Case study of Kenya
Year 8: Population, Trade and Development; Case study of Brazil and Weather and Climate
Year 9: Natural Hazards; People and the Environment and Globalisation
Our curriculum is influenced by our school mission statement, which aspires to personal excellence and aims to enable all children, regardless of background or ability, to flourish. Students at Gartree High School receive two 50-minute lessons of Geography a week. The curriculum is based upon the National Curriculum and is supported by clear skills development and knowledge progression. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all students. Learning opportunities outside of the classroom are factored into the curriculum to enable students to experience geography in action with residential trips offered to both Snowdonia in Wales and Iceland, which enhances the students’ understanding of the world. Students are encouraged to participate in the Humanities Explorer initiative to visit local historic, geographical and cultural landmarks to attain a gold, silver or bronze award. Students are also further supported to continue their learning through the Humanities Challenge booklet to conduct further research and independent study of the topics learnt about in lessons.
By the time students leave Gartree High School students will:
· have an excellent knowledge of significant places at a range of scales.
· have an excellent understanding of the ways in which places are interdependent and interconnected and how much human and physical environments are interrelated.
· have an extensive base of geographical knowledge and vocabulary that can be used accurately.
· be fluent in complex, geographical enquiry and the ability to apply questioning skills.
· have the ability to reach clear conclusions and develop a reasoned argument to explain findings.
· have significant levels of originality, imagination or creativity as shown in interpretations and representations of the subject matter.
· be highly developed in geographical skills and techniques of description, explanation, data presentation, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, map-reading, problem-solving and fieldwork.
· developed the students’ written skills along with clear graphical, cartographical techniques so that they are literate and numerate in their communication of geography.
· have an enthusiasm for the subject and a curiosity and interest in global matters affecting the world today.
· have the ability to express well-balanced opinions, rooted in very good knowledge and understanding about current and contemporary issues in society and the environment.
Key Stage 4
Course: GCSE Geography
Exam Board: Pearson Edexcel B (1GB0)
Final Assessment: Three 1 hour and 30-minute exams taken at the end of Year 11
Curriculum Aims
The Pearson Edexcel B specification content is framed by geographical enquiry questions that encourage an investigative approach to each of the key ideas. As part of this enquiry process, students are encouraged to use integrated geographical skills, including appropriate mathematics and statistics, in order to explore geographical questions and issues. Students are encouraged to make geographical decisions by applying their knowledge, understanding and skills to real-life 21st-century people and environment issues.
Fieldwork environments are aligned with the core content of the course so that the experience of fieldwork can reinforce and enlighten learning in the classroom, and learning in the classroom can underpin learning in the field. The specification content develops students’ knowledge and understanding of place, process and interaction by first introducing them to UK issues and then global ones, including two fieldwork investigations. Building on this, via a decision-making exercise, students will investigate a contemporary local, national or regional people and environment issues within a global setting, drawing on their wider knowledge and understanding from across the course.
Curriculum Overview
The Key Stage 4 curriculum is an extension of what students have learnt at Key Stage 3 and offers a seamless transition to GCSE. Students at Gartree High School receive three 50-minute lessons of Geography a week by a Geography specialist exploring human, physical and environmental themes over nine topics that utilise case study knowledge from Key Stage 3.
At Key Stage 4, students follow the Pearson Edexcel B specification for a GCSE qualification. It has a clear and coherent structure with a straightforward format made up of three components – Global Geographical Issues, UK Geographical Issues and People and Environment Issues – Making Geographical Decisions. The Pearson Edexcel B specification was deliberately chosen as it fits well with the existing Key Stage 3 curriculum, meaning that students would be well prepared for the rigours of GCSE. Furthermore, the case studies selected by the exam board in their official resources on Mumbai (for a nominated megacity in an emerging or developing country) and India (for a nominated emerging country) are well suited to the large Indian student demographic in the school who have prior knowledge of the places being studied.
There are nine topics to be studied at Key Stage 4 over a two-year period with a focus on human, physical and environmental geography at a local, national and global level:
Topic 1: Hazardous Earth
Topic 2: Development Dynamics
Topic 3: Challenges of an Urbanising World
Topic 4: The UK’s Evolving Physical Landscape
Topic 5: The UK’s Evolving Human Landscape
Topic 6: Geographical Investigations
Topic 7: People and the Biosphere
Topic 8: Forests Under Threat
Topic 9: Consuming Energy Resources
Further details of the GCSE Geography specification can be found here: