Geography

GEOGRAPHY

Curriculum Purpose

Preparing students for careers and furthering social justice

Our geography curriculum will enable our students to think geographically; we want our students to better understand the natural and social worlds, to think about alternative futures and what they could do to influence them in their personal and professional lives, to engage in current debates of geographical significance, to have power over their knowledge and go beyond the limits of their personal experiences and the geographical spaces they occupy.

Knowledge acquisition and application as a measure of progress

Our curriculum will give students the knowledge (powerful and procedural) to think geographically, engage with and critically analyse geographical issues.

The needs of our community

Geography is a powerful subject and we recognise the importance of representing the world accurately, fairly and truthfully. Our curriculum will reflect positively on the community of students within our school and actively question inequalities in our local and global environments.

Teaching geography for its intrinsic value

We believe the world is an amazing place and that the subject of geography is well placed to understand, discuss and solve many of society’s most pressing challenges.

Curriculum Rationale

What do we teach and why do we teach it?

Our approach to curriculum is underpinned by Lambert’s GeoCapabilities framework. Knowledge is broken down into substantive knowledge (the factual and contextual knowledge of Earth as a system), conceptual knowledge (in which students acquire the ability to develop inferential and relational knowledge about geographical concepts) and procedural knowledge (equipping students with skills to access and question knowledge).

Through this approach, we enable our students to ‘think geographically’. We want our students to better understand the natural and social worlds, to think about alternative futures and what they could do to influence them in their personal and professional lives,, to engage in current debates of geographical significance, and to have power over their knowledge and go beyond the limits of their personal experiences and geographical spaces.

Why do we teach it in that order?

Our KS3 curriculum introduces a range of geographical concepts, such as place, space and human and physical processes through ‘familiar’ scenarios, and provides opportunities to acquire and practise procedural knowledge. The curriculum interweaves and revisits geographical concepts so our students are able to develop sound understanding and flexible thinking. Flexible thinking enables our students to apply their knowledge to increasingly unfamiliar and complex geographical scenarios and develop a geographical ‘state of mind’. For example, in Year 7, we introduce erosion as a physical process in the context of a fluvial environment. In Year 8, students apply their understanding of erosion to coastal environments and develop inferential knowledge as they make links between erosion and tourism, and erosion and global warming.