Vision for Geography at The Wilnecote School

1. Create a love of Geography, enabling the students to appreciate and value their environment and the world that we live in.
2. Provide the students with an opportunity to use their learning about the world to appreciate how landscapes have been shaped and the processes that were/are involved.
3. Provide opportunities for students to see and experience the world that we live in.
4. Promote student spatial awareness of their placing in the world and our interdependence with other nations.
5. Promote student realisation and empathy that people and places around the world are not identical to their experiences.
6. Promote student acceptance and interest in different places, backgrounds, cultures, race and religions and recognise that they make the world a more interesting place.
7. Raise student awareness of global issues that threaten society.
8. Enable the students to become positive global citizens, encouraging them to make a difference and leave the world in a better state than when they entered it.
9. Enable students to draw links between different topics that we cover and appreciate how they are all complexly interlinked.
10. Enable students to practice and build key Geographical skills – describe, explain, assess, evaluate, decision making and fieldwork.

 

The curriculum has been designed with these cores aims in mind. The starting point was the National Curriculum and AQA schemes but several key factors influenced the choice within this:

 

1. The desire to balance breadth with depth – The Geography National Curriculum has considerable breadth. Acknowledging the time constraints put on us at KS3, if we were to teach the breadth as suggested, the topics would become superficial and lack the depth that is required to truly understand and appreciate them. We want our students to have a depth of awareness about the world and its operations to prepare them successfully for life outside of the classroom.

 

2. The desire to balance Physical Geography with Human Geography – Geography is both a Science and an Art. Few Geographers are able to specialise fully in both. Some students prefer objectivity and others, subjectivity. Despite Geographers eventually choosing to specialise in one or the other, they remain interdependent. In order to provide a curriculum that is broad and balanced, that provides skill development, promotes curriculum engagement and a regard for their interdependence we decided that we would cover both so that there is ‘something for everyone’. In Year 7 for example, we study ‘The People Problem’ followed by ‘Exceptional Ecosystems’ enabling students to appreciate the impact that an increasing population is having on the world, in particular the demand for resources and where these resources are coming from.

 

3. Building on KS2 – We are aware that students at KS1 and 2 are taught locational knowledge, place knowledge and basic geographical skills, however our experience and research suggests that this is not done in the depth that is required to make significant progress. A recent report in the TES ‘Ofsted concern over primary school geography’ (Griffin, 2021) revealed that at present almost 50% of primaries were not meeting the national curriculum expectations for geography. This is why we have chosen to begin Year 7 with ‘Geographical Skills’. This topic allows all students to reach a baseline level before building additional content onto it.

 

4. Preventing repetition of topics at KS3 and KS4 – We have primarily opted to teach topics at KS3 that are not covered by the KS4 GCSE specification. Glaciation is one such topic. Although Glaciation can be covered at KS4, we wanted to cover it at KS3 (Frozen Planet) to address geological timescales and change in climate from the ice age to present as outlined in the National Curriculum but also to increase student spatial awareness and introduce them to a geologically important area in the UK shaped by glacial processes – The Lake District. We opted to cover the alternative of river and coastal landscapes at KS4. Likewise, due to time constraints, we have favoured to teach those topics on the National Curriculum at KS3, that are not taught at KS4. For example, Hot Deserts is taught at KS4 so has been omitted from KS3. By doing this, it allows a breath of knowledge, skills and access to a greater range of geographical topics.

 

5. Topics considered to be ‘non-negotiable’ – Despite our attempt not to readdress topics taught at KS3 in KS4, we felt that there are some concepts that are either fundamental to Geography or are culturally significant to students today. Once such concept is climate change. In Year 8 we teach ‘Global Concerns in the 21^st This topic introduces students to current global issues such as overconsumption leading to plastic gyres in our oceans and climate change. This is done in depth at Year 8 however, we do discuss it again at KS4 when teaching ‘The Living World’ enabling students to see the value of forested areas and the impact that they can have on mitigating climate change and again in ‘Natural Hazards’ when investigating the management of climate change through technology such as Carbon Capture. Although they do ‘overlearn’ some fundamental concepts, the examples/case studies that we use are different e.g. Australian bush fires (2020/1) at KS3 and managing water supply in the Himalayas at KS4. It also raises student awareness that Geography is a subject with concepts that are interdependent. There are also opportunities to support topics taught by other departments in Humanities. For example, the topic ‘Changing UK Development’ in Geography ties in with ‘The Industrial Revolution’ in History. Likewise, ‘Global Concerns in the 21^st Century ties in with Stewardship in R.E.

 

6. The core geographical skills – The ability analyse, evaluate, decision make, problem solve and conduct investigations out in the field is what makes geography so valuable post 18. We aim to build in as many opportunities to practice these skills across KS3 and KS4 – see mapping below. By revisiting skills and overlearning (both within and across topics) we aim to embed them. This is a principle highlighted by the research of Rosenshine and emphasised by Sherrington (2019) in his book ‘Rosenshine’s Principles in Action’. This has also been a focus of previous staff CPD.

 

As a department, we are currently finalising the last of our KS3 schemes. We are also revisiting and refining assessments to ensure that knowledge and skills build effectively as planned.