Aims of the Curriculum Area

• We are a community school that teaches our students how to become global citizens. We aim to foster a sense of enjoyment and motivation through the breadth and depth of our geography curriculum.
• We are a truly inclusive school that provides a broad and balanced curriculum. Students will develop independence in the analysis of themes and the holistic skills of a geographer.
• We prepare our students for their future careers and embed oracy, literacy and numeracy throughout our curriculum. Students will receive a solid foundation in cartographic, graphical and statistical skills.
• We deliver quality first teaching, bespoke intervention and build exam skills to drive academic success.

Teaching Methods and Student Organisation

• Students start their Geography journey in year 7 as mixed ability classes and remain in these groups throughout KS3. This approach enables the department to provide quality teaching to students of all abilities using a curriculum that is accessible to all.
• All lessons start with a Do Now Task (DNA); this is either a short challenging task based on independent spaced retrieval activity or a task based on qualified opinion and prior knowledge.
• All lessons promote challenge and provide a benchmark for measuring progress. A combination of teacher input (I do), demonstration/modelling (we do) and application (you do) coupled with skillfully used questioning helps assess student understanding and promotes inclusion for all.
• Our teacher use modelling to show students what excellent answers look like, unpacking each stage of their thinking and providing success criteria throughout to support students towards self-assessment and independence.

Curriculum and Resources

• We have created a bespoke curriculum which is linked to global contexts and themes. Locational and place knowledge are interweaved into the themes as well as structured into physical and human processes. These form the basis for our curriculum.
• We are actively adapting ur curriculum to include a wide range of themes and concepts within geography to ensure a broad and balanced curriculum for all to explore.
• Students continue their progression by looking at a wide range of synoptic themes with increasing levels of complexity.
• Fieldwork is introduced within Year 8 and 9, looking at microclimates around the school site as well as globalisation and environmental quality indexes.

After KS3

• Students in Years 10 and 11 focus on preparation for Eduqas GCSE Geography A. We study this specification as it complemented our broad and balanced curriculum at Key Stage 3.
• Our physical topics include landscapes and physical processes, tectonic landscapes and hazards, and weather, climate and ecosystems.
• Our human topics include rural and urban links, developments and resource issues and social development issues.
• At Key Stage 4, students are offered fieldwork opportunities that incorporate both human and physical investigations.

Other Activities

• Targeted intervention and support groups for students for key stage 4 take place throughout the year. Students are selected to access these groups based on a wide range of factors which include prior ability as well as wellbeing.