Geography
What is Geography?
Geography is the study of relationships between physical and human phenomena leading to different geographical patterns on the surface of the earth. Geography is crucial to understanding the modern world around us, not just looking at what happens but delving deeper to understand why this happens allowing students to make sense of the world around them.
Why do we teach Geography at HASU?
Whilst other disciplines may study landscapes, the atmosphere, people and culture, the built environment and politics, geography is the only discipline that concerns itself with the relationships between these resulting in spatial differences. Geography equips students with the knowledge to think about the world in new ways, recognising human and physical interactions, appreciating the different cultures and ways of life, and understanding contemporary human and environmental problems. It is for these reasons that we aim to develop students at Harris Academy Sutton to develop geographical knowledge and understanding. Through this powerful academic knowledge, it is our intention that students will go beyond their existing knowledge and feel confident to critique information, consider different perspectives, reflect, and feel empowered to resolve these problems.
How do we teach Geography at HASU at KS3?
Our curriculum is based on contextual (locational), propositional (theoretical) and procedural (skills) geographical knowledge including geographical fieldwork to encourage students to ‘think geographically’.
Our Key Stage 3 curriculum is taught using enquiry questions allowing students to think geographically about places and processes both locally and globally. The enquiry questions are interweaved with five main key concepts: Development, Climate, Human and Physical Interactions/Processes, Sustainability and Geomorphology. These are revisited throughout Key Stage 3 and become increasingly complex and interconnected as the curriculum progresses.
Within lessons students build locational knowledge, and once these foundations are established place knowledge can be developed. Place knowledge and geographical theories and processes are taught through a variety of methods to support understanding including atlases, articles, GIS, videos, graphs, and images. With these sources students are encouraged to analyse and interpret developing their ability to think write and speak like geographers. Through using key vocabulary, they will describe, explain, and make decisions about the causes, consequences, and responses to the geographical patterns around them.
Geography lessons also encompass several opportunities for students’ personal development, empowering students to be empathetic and inquisitive whilst learning about new places. Lessons reflect the contemporary and challenging issues we have as a society, providing engaging examples of not only how geography influences our world, but more importantly to develop students’ passion to show that they can influence geography through links to geographical careers.
How do we teach Geography at HASU at KS4?
Students will have the option of studying Geography at GCSE as part of our broad and balanced Key Stage 4 curriculum.
At Key Stage 4, students are taught similarly to KS3 with a strong focus on enquiry questions. There are eight topics which include human and physical geography on varying scales. These are assessed in year 11 through two separate papers: Our Natural World and People and Society. The topics within these papers are taught discretely and sequenced specifically to ensure students can make conceptual links between and within synoptic units.
Our Key Stage 4 curriculum is taught based on the four OCR GCSE Assessment objectives, so students can demonstrate locational and place knowledge, demonstrate geographical understanding, apply knowledge to make judgements and use geographical skills to investigate findings.
Within lessons students will have knowledge retrieval practice before being taught new geographical content including key geographical theories and processes. With this knowledge they are often encouraged to link this to geographical theories across topics and apply these to specific case-studies. In a Key Stage 4 Geography lesson, students might study the causes and impacts of a geographical process such as an earthquake in a specific place and write an extended answer to explain why some places are more vulnerable to earthquakes.
Further to the geographical content studied, students will have an opportunity to apply their knowledge through fieldwork both in a physical and human geography context. This compulsory fieldwork allows students to understand how content can be linked locally and how it is relevant to their own personal geographies. Fieldwork is taught discreetly through a series of lessons to prepare for and consolidate their fieldwork investigations.
What exam board do we study and Key Stage 4?
Students studying Geography follow the OCR Geography B (Geography for Enquiring Minds) (J384) Specification.
This specification can be found here.
