Geography
CONTEXT
Geography is the study of the physical world, different places and the relationships between people and their environments. It is separated into two branches of knowledge, physical geography and human geography. The Fairfield Geography Curriculum inspires in pupils a curiosity and fascination about the world and its people that will remain with them for the rest of their lives. It equips pupils with knowledge about diverse places and people and natural and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human processes. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world helps them to deepen their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments. Geographical knowledge and skills provide the frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.
CURRICULUM
The Fairfield Geography curriculum is knowledge-rich. The ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young et al, 2014) that pupils gain from the Fairfield Geography Curriculum contains the knowledge required to improve cultural capital and close the gap for disadvantaged pupils. There is a focus on developing literacy, oracy and numeracy skills wherever possible. At Key Stage 3, the National Curriculum is covered. In Year 7 and Year 8 pupils broadly follow the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum. There is an emphasis on Geographical Enquiry where pupils follow a series of lessons based on a big geographical question linked to the key learning objectives for each Scheme of Learning. These include open-ended tasks encouraging pupils to develop their literacy and oracy skills and evaluation.
Our Geography curriculum has been sequenced to allow pupils to build on prior knowledge wherever possible. For example, understanding development underpins many other topics, such as the effects of earthquakes and rates of urbanisation. Opportunities to revisit core concepts and geographical themes in new contexts regularly. One example of this would be that the Middle East and Africa units allow pupils to revisit urbanisation and population change, respectively. Key geographical themes are threaded throughout the curriculum, and by considering our learning through the lens of these themes can allow us to organise our learning and “think like a geographer”. We have chosen to focus on the following themes to support the sequencing and support pupils to see their learning fit into a wider picture in Geography:
- Locational and place knowledge – being able to give detailed geographical descriptions of locations, describe their human and physical features and how these can be interlinked.
- Geographical processes – how human and physical processes influence landscapes and experiences.
- Diversity and conflict – how and why places may be different, how change can lead to inequalities and how may decisions lead to conflict between stakeholders and is there a way to manage this?
- Sustainability – how can the needs of society be met now without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs?
- Personal geography – how do geographical issues affect you? What can you do to be a responsible global citizen? How do you experience places and what affects that?
- Skills – procedural knowledge – the Fairfield Geography curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils are experts in the geographical skills including; use of maps at a range of scales, a range of sources of geographical information, geographical enquiry skills, data presentation and statistical skills, communicating findings and evaluating conclusions and methods.
