Geography

Curriculum Rationale: Geography

The geography curriculum aims to promote academic excellence by providing all pupils with the knowledge they need to understand the world around them and support the development of geographical skills. By studying geography, we aim to inspire pupils to be curious and fascinated about the world they live in and its people and environments.  Pupils will develop a strong geographical knowledge of diverse local and global places; people; world resources and the interactions between natural physical and human environments through a research informed curriculum.  

By studying geography, pupils are given the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in the context of real-life situations and through exploring detailed case studies. Pupils are also given the opportunity to investigate the world around them with practical investigations, enrichment opportunities and field trips to geographical locations, improving their cultural capital, self-confidence and underpinning future learning.   

We want pupils to love geography and be confident that they will experience stimulating lessons with the support and care of dedicated departmental staff who champion every young person. We aim to ensure that all our pupils including those who are disadvantaged or have any special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) have access to a carefully planned and sequenced inclusive curriculum which promotes academic excellence.

Geography is all around us and as such is an ideal subject to prepare pupils for future challenges, be it further study or entrance to the world of work. We endeavour to foster a lifelong love of geography through varied activities both inside and outside the classroom and prepare well-rounded students for the world after 16, both as members of society and in whatever career path they choose to follow.   

Curriculum Aim: Geography

The course aims to develop students' human and physical understanding of the world and to develop the knowledge and subsequent skills to support students to compete with students from the most privileged backgrounds.

To achieve this, we aim to:

• Provide a curriculum with explicit systematic teaching and rehearsal of knowledge to support pupils to become resilient learners who know more and remember more.

• Support the development of powerful and knowledge to augment a deep and varied geographical understanding and provide a robust platform to underpin lifelong success.

• Develop a contextual knowledge of globally significant places – including their physical and human characteristics in relation to a variety of different geographical processes.

• Become competent in a variety of geographical skills enabling interpretation, collection, analysis and communication of data from a range of cartographical and graphical sources
   

• Embed skills throughout the curriculum to support well-rounded and independent life-long learners.

• Provide opportunities for fieldwork in order to practice geographical skills and data collection within a local context to apply and consolidate geographical concepts

Assessment: Internal

In order to track pupils' progress, address misconceptions and provide timely feedback, departmental staff use a range of assessment techniques. These include but are not limited to questioning, low-stakes assessments and formal learning cycle assessments.  The main purpose of assessment is to provide regular feed forward opportunities which support accelerated progress over time.