Geography Curriculum
Understanding our planet, shaping our future.
Why study Geography?
What geography develops
Student voice
“I love geography because it helps me to understand more about our world. I really enjoy learning about why populations change and different push and pull factors.” Laura, Year 7
Key Stage 3 Geography– Cycle Overview
Cycle 1
Year 7 – Is our view of the world accurate and how is the United Kingdom changing?
- Classification of countries: LIC, NIC, HIC
- Measures of development: Social and Economic
- Life in HICs and LICs
- Climate change
- Population density and distribution
- Population change
- Migration-causes and consequences
- Settlement change-traffic issues
- Environmental changes now and in the future
Key skills
- Map skills-location
- Photograph interpretation
- Annotations
- Fieldwork-primary data collection
- Explanations
- Classifications
- Analysing data
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Anthropogenic
- Deprivation
- Life expectancy
- Literacy rate
- Perception
- Quality of life
- Standard of living
- Infrastructure
- Industrialisation
- Population density
- Population distribution
- Quality of life
- Standard of living
- Sustainability
Year 8 – Our restless earth. Is Russia a prisoner of geography?
Knowledge focus
- Location of tectonic hazards
- Structure of the earth
- Plate boundaries: characteristics and landforms
- Hazards [volcano, earthquake and tsunami]: causes, impacts and responses
- Location of Russia as a transcontinental country
- Physical landscape
- Climate features
- Population distribution and characteristics
- Russia’s resources
- Russia as a superpower
Key skills
- Map skills-location
- Photograph interpretation
- Annotations
- Explanations-chains of reasoning
- Sequencing landforms
- Climate graphs and population pyramids
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Convection currents
- Conservative Plate
- Constructive Plate
- Destructive Plate
- Dormant
- Magnitude
- Subduction
- Superpower
- Territory
- Transcontinental
- Populated
- Distribution
- Anomaly
- Biomes
- Polar Cell
- Ferrel Cell
- Global atmospheric Circulation
- Life expectancy
- Infant mortality rate
- Economically active
Year 9 – Our restless earth
Knowledge focus
- Location of tectonic hazards
- Structure of the earth
- Plate boundaries: characteristics and landforms
- Hazards [volcano, earthquake and tsunami]: causes, impacts and responses
Key skills
- Map skills-location
- Photograph interpretation
- Annotations
- Explanations-chains of reasoning
- Sequencing landforms
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Convection currents
- Conservative Plate
- Constructive Plate
- Destructive Plate
- Dormant
- Hot Spot
- Magnitude
- Pyroclastic flow
- Subduction
- Viscosity
Cycle 2
Year 7 – How do rivers change the landscape?
Knowledge focus
- Sections of a river-profile, characteristics and landforms
- Factors influencing erosion, transportation and deposition
- Drainage basin hydrological cycle and flood risk
- Causes, impacts and management of flooding now and in the future
Key skills
- Photo analysis-labels and annotations
- Sequencing landform formation
- Explanations
- Decision making
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Long profile
- Cross profile
- Source
- Mouth
- Erosion
- Transportation
- Deposition
- Abrasion
- Attrition
- Hydraulic Action
- Solution
- Slip-off slope
- Interception
- Precipitation
- Geology
- Urbanisation
- Impermeable
- Monsoon
- Hard engineering
- Soft engineering
Year 2b – Are tropical rainforests at risk?
Knowledge focus
- Location using map skills
- Describing distributions
- Explanations-Chains of reasoning
- Decision making
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Key skills
- Photo analysis-labels and annotations
- Sequencing landform formation
- Explanations
- Decision making
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Ecosystem
- Biome
- Biotic
- Abiotic
- Flora
- Fauna
- Adaptation
- Food chain
- Food web
- Consumer
- Producer
- Decomposer
- Nutrient cycle
- Sustainable
- Sustainable management
Year 8 – 2a-How are cities changing?
Knowledge focus
- Job sectors
- Deindustrialisation: causes and consequences
- Urban decline
- Brownfield development vs greenfield development
- Sustainable cities
Key skills
- Explanations-chains of reasoning
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
- Decision making
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Primary
- Secondary
- Tertiary
- Quaternary
- Clark-Fisher model
- Deindustrialisation
- North-South Divide
- Globalisation
- Mechanisation
- Negative multiplier effect
- Regeneration
- Stakeholders
- Investment
- Brownfield
- Greenfield
- Urban Sprawl
- Sustainable city
Year 8 – 2b-How are coasts changing?
Knowledge focus
- High energy coastlines: characteristics, processes and landforms
- Low energy coastlines: characteristics, processes and landforms
- Factors influencing erosion, transportation and deposition
- Landslides and the role of mass movement
- Coastal landform change: management now and in the future
Key skills
- Photo analysis-labels and annotations
- Sequencing landform formation
- Explanations
- Decision making
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
- Field work: Secondary data
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Hydraulic Action
- Salt Crystallisation
- Destructive Wave
- Hard Engineering
- Solution
- Attrition
- Constructive Wave
- Soft Engineering
- Freeze Thaw
- Longshore Drift
Year 9 – Health and wealth
Knowledge focus
- Measures of social development
- Impact of health on development of a country
- Famine: Causes, effects and responses
- Malaria: Causes, effects and responses
- HIV: Causes, effects and responses
- Future of health and wealth
Key skills
- Decision making
- Describing patterns and trends using maps and graphs
- Location on maps
- Explanations-Chains of reasoning
- Classifying-social, economic, environmental, political, short-term and long-term
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Literacy Rates
- Number of doctors per people
- GDP (Gross Disposable Income) Per Person
- Infant Mortality Rate
- Birth Rate
- Death Rate
- Famine
- Malaria
- Microfinance
- Debt Relief
Cycle 3
Year 7 – 3a-How are populations changing?
Knowledge focus
- Demographics-Demographic Transition Model
- Population pyramids
- Push and pull factors for rural-urban migration in LICs
- Counter-urbanisation in HICs
- Ageing and Youthful populations-causes, impacts and responses
- Malthus vs Boserup
Key skills
- Interpretating population pyramids
- Graph analysis
- Explanations-Chains for reasoning
- Evaluating
- Field work-secondary data
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Demographics
- Inequality
- Migration
- Counter-urbanisation
- Quality of life
- Demographic Transition Model
- Standard of living
- Sustainability
- Malthus
- Boserup
- Management policies
3b-There is no planet B
Knowledge focus
- Resource and resource exploitation
- Water security
- Sustainability-Fast Fashion
- Sustainability-Climate Change
Key skills
- Classifications: Social, economic, environmental
- Explanations-Chains of reasoning
- Decision Making
- Map and graph analysis
- Field work-primary data “fast fashion”
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Mitigation
- Management
- Resource
- Exploitation
- Sustainability
- Anthropogenic
- Water security
- Water insecurity
Year 8- 3a-Africa is NOT a country
Knowledge focus
- Biomes-Hot desert
- Hot pressure systems
- Nutrient cycle, Carbon cycle and Water cycle
- Desertification: causes, impacts and responses
- Nigeria: Factors influencing and hindering development
Key skills
- Location using map skills
- Describing distributions
- Explanations-Chains of reasoning
- Decision making
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Biomes
- Biodiversity
- Nutrient cycle
- Carbon cycle
- Water cycle
- Desertification
- High pressure
- Rural-urban migration
Year 8-3b-The geography of conflict
Knowledge focus
- Refugee crisis-causes, impacts and management
- Climate change refugees
- Ocean governance-Europe Fishing Crisis
- Ocean governance-South China Sea
Key skills
- Explanations-chains of reasoning
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
- Decision making
- Classifications: social, economic, environmental, political, short-term and long-term
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Refugee
- Ocean governance
- Sustainability
- Climate Change
- Anthropogenic
Year 9 – Ecosystems
Knowledge focus
- Location of world’s major ecosystems
- Desert ecosystems: location and biodiversity
- Tundra ecosystem: location and biodiversity
- Food chains
- Human uses of ecosystems and sustainability
Key skills
- Map skills
- Explanations
- Labels and annotations
- Writing like a geographer
- Reading like a geographer
- Fieldwork: Primary data “litter impacting ecosystem”
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Week 10 assessment
- Formative assessments
Key Vocabulary
- Ecosystem
- Biome
- Biotic
- Abiotic
- Flora
- Fauna
- Tundra
- Desert
- Temperate deciduous
- Tropical rainforest
- Food chain
- Food web
- Consumer
- Producer
- Decomposer
- Nutrient cycle
- Sustainable management
- Deforestation
Key Stage 4 Geography
Cycle 1
Year 10 -Theme 6-Economic development and resource issues
Knowledge focus
- Economic measures of development
- Causes of inequality: Trade
- Causes of inequality: Multi-National Corporations
- Growth of tourism
- Consequences of tourism and role in development
- Responses to inequality: Aid [Emergency vs long-term developmental]
- Responses to inequality: Fair Trade
- Water resources: scarcity vs security
- Water footprint
- Water management at a range of scales
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key vocabulary
- Abstraction
- Development Indicator
- Development continuum
- Enclave tourism
- Leakage
- Outsourcing
- Protectionist Policies
- Sustainable development goals
- Top down/Bottom up
- Trade deficit/surplus
Year 10 -Theme 7-Social development issues
Knowledge focus
- Social measures of development
- Factors influencing birth rates and death rates
- Causes, consequences and management of child labour
- Causes, consequences and management of HIV
- Causes, consequences and management of Malaria
- International Refugee Crisis: causes and management
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key vocabulary
- Bottom-up
- Economic migrants
- Human Development Index
- Infant Mortality Rate
- Refugees
- Top-down development
Year 11 - Theme 5-weather, climate and ecosystems
Knowledge focus
- Evidence of climate change: past and present
- Natural and human causes of climate change
- Impacts on carbon cycle
- Global atmospheric circulation-Hadley and Ferrel cell
- Low-pressure systems: causes, consequences and management
- High-pressure systems: causes, consequences and management
- Variation in UK climate
- High- and low-pressure weather systems: causes, consequences and management
- Ecosystems: location and biodiversity [Tropical Rainforest and Semi-arid Savannah Grassland]
- Nutrient cycle and water cycle [Tropical Rainforest and Semi-arid Savannah Grassland]
- Vegetation structure and adaptation [Tropical Rainforest and Semi-arid Savannah Grassland]
- Human uses and sustainable management [Tropical Rainforest and Semi-arid Savannah Grassland]
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key Vocabulary
- Carbon sink
- Desertification
- Greenhouse
- Inter-glacial
- Quaternary
- Air mass
- Depression
- Leeward side
- Maritime
- Ocean currents
- Inter Tropical Convergence Zone
- Urban heat island
- Microclimate
- Biodiversity
- Biomes
- Mono-culture
Cycle 2
Year 10 -Theme 3-Tectonic landscapes and hazards
Knowledge focus
- Distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes
- Plate boundaries: constructive, destructive, conservative
- Plate boundaries and associated landforms
- Vulnerability
- Volcanic hazards: causes, effects and responses in a LIC
- Earthquake hazards: causes, effects and responses LIC Vs HIC
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key vocabulary
- Ash cloud
- Caldera
- Cinder Cone
- Constructive plate margin
- Destructive plate margin
- Divergence zones
- Hazard map
- Lahar
- Lava Flows
- Lava tube
- Ocean trench
- Pyroclastic flows
- Rift valley
- Shield Volcano
- Stratovolcano
- Subduction
- Tsunami
- Volcanic hotspot
- Vulnerability
Year 10 -Theme 1-Distinctive landscapes
Knowledge focus
- Features of a distinctive landscape
- Management of distinctive landscapes
- Processes fluvial and coastal: erosion, deposition, transportation
- Landforms fluvial and coastal
- Future risks: river flooding, coastal flooding
- Management: Hard and soft engineering
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key vocabulary
- Carrying capacity
- Honey-pot sites
- Abrasion
- Attrition
- Deposition
- Drainage basin
- Floodplain
- Gorges
- Hydraulic action
- Meander
- Plunge Pool
- Slip-off slope
- Transport
- Fetch
- Longshore drift
- Retreat
- Wave-cut platform
- Annual regime
- Discharge
- Hydrograph
- Overland flow
- Throughflow
Year 11 - Theme 2-Rural-urban links
Knowledge focus
- Location of rural and urban areas in the UK
- Counter-urbanisation causes and impacts
- Changes in rural areas: deprivation and ageing population
- Causes and consequences of population change in the UK
- Challenges facing UK towns and cities: new homes and sustainable urban areas [brownfield and greenfield development]
- Retail changes: causes and impacts
- Global patterns of urbanisation-World Cities
- Consequences of urban growth in a world city HIV vs LIC or NIC
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key Vocabulary
- Ageing population
- Brownfield site
- Counter-urbanisation
- Commuting
- Deprivation
- Egan’s Wheel
- Greenfield site
- Sphere of Influence
- Sustainable community
- Urban-rural continuum
- Global cities
- Globalisation
- Infrastructure
- Urbanisation
Cycle 3
Year 10 -Paper 3-Fieldwork
Knowledge focus
- Fieldwork concept set by the exam board for each exam series
- Planning, location and risk assessments
- Methodology: Primary and Secondary data collection, sampling techniques, qualitative and quantitative
- Data Presentation
- Data analysis and Conclusion
Key skills
- AO1-Knowledge
- AO2-Understanding
- AO3-Inference
- AO4-Geographical skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key Vocabulary
- Primary data
- Secondary data
- Qualitative data
- Quantitative data
- Systematic sampling
- Random sampling
- Stratified Sampling
- Cartographic
- Reliability
Year 11 -Revision
Knowledge focus
Key Stage 5 Geography
Cycle 1
Year 12-Paper 1-Changing Places
Knowledge focus
- Relationship and connections: continuity and change in places
- Meaning and representations of places
- Economic characteristics of places over time: Clark-Fisher Model, external factors influencing change in primary and secondary sector employment
- Economic change and social inequalities in deindustrialised urban places
- The service economy (tertiary) and its social and economic impacts
- The 21st century knowledge economy (quaternary) and its social and economic impact
- The rebranding process and players in rural places
- Rural management and the challenges of continuity and change
- The rebranding process and players in urban places
- Urban management and the challenges of continuity and change
Key skills
- AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of places, environments, concepts, processes, interactions and change, at a variety of scales
- AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding in different contexts to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues
- AO3: Use a variety of relevant quantitative, qualitative and fieldwork skills
Assessment
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- End of module assessment
Key vocabulary
- Endogenous factors
- ethnic clustering
- exogenous factors
- gentrification
- governance
- idyll
- locales
- perception
- placelesness
- rebranding
- social clustering
Year 12-Paper 2-Global Governance
Knowledge focus
- Globalisation, migration and a shrinking world
- Causes of international economic migration
- Consequences and management of international economic migration
- Causes, consequences, and management of refugee movements
- Causes, consequences, and management of rural-urban migration in developing countries
- Global governance of the Earth’s oceans
- Global flows of shipping and sea cables
- Sovereignty of ocean resources
- Managing marine environments
- Managing ocean pollution
Key skills
- AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of places, environments, concepts, processes, interactions and change, at a variety of scales
- AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding in different contexts to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues
- AO3: Use a variety of relevant quantitative, qualitative and fieldwork skills
Assessment
- Do it now tasks
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- Week 10 assessment
Key vocabulary
- Acquisition
- containerisation
- cumulative causation
- cultural erosion
- diaspora
- Foreign Direct Investment
- Global common
- interdependence
- offshoring
- off sourcing
- sovereignty
- transformationalist
Year 13 - NEA
Knowledge focus
- Individual enquiry process
- Context and planning
- Data collection
- Presentation
- Analysis
- Conclusion
- Evaluation
Key skills
- NEA formal submission
Assessment
- NEA formal submission
Cycle 2
Year 12-Paper 3-Development in an African context
Knowledge focus
- Definitions, measures and patterns of development
- The influence of physical factors on the development of two or more countries
- The influence of economic factors on the development of two or more countries
- The influence of political, social and cultural factors on the development of two or more countries
- The impact of development on the environment of two or more countries
- Challenges of desertification in two or more countries
- Strategies to promote development in two or more countries
Key skills
- AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of places, environments, concepts, processes, interactions and change, at a variety of scales
- AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding in different contexts to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues
- AO3: Use a variety of relevant quantitative, qualitative and fieldwork skills
Assessment
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- End of module assessment
Key vocabulary
- Development
- multivariate analysis
- indices
- development gap
- development continuum
- Rostow model
- colonialisation
- desertification
- sustainability
Year 13-Paper 3-Tectonic Hazards
Knowledge focus
- Tectonic processes and hazards
- Volcanoes, processes, hazards and their impacts
- Earthquakes, processes, hazards and their impacts
- Human factors affecting risk and vulnerability
- Responses to tectonic hazards
Key skills
- AO1: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of places, environments, concepts, processes, interactions and change, at a variety of scales
- AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding in different contexts to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues
- AO3: Use a variety of relevant quantitative, qualitative and fieldwork skills
Assessment
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- End of module assessment
Key Vocabulary
- Asenthosphere
- continental
- Degg Model
- hazard mitigation cycle
- lithosphere
- love waves
- palaeomagnetism
- Park’s Model
- primary waves
- Rayleigh waves
Cycle 3
Year 12-21st Century Challenges
Knowledge focus
- Knowledge and understanding of appropriate specialised and key concepts such as place, space, scale and environment. The core themes become linked through applied understanding of these key concepts.
Key skills
- AO2: Apply knowledge and understanding in different contexts to interpret, analyse and evaluate geographical information and issues
- AO3: Use a variety of relevant quantitative, qualitative and fieldwork skills
Assessment
- Formative assessment
- Exam questions
- End of module assessment
Key vocabulary
- Adaptation
- causes
- challenges
- conflicts
- consequences
- implications
- issues
- management
- opportunities
- negative feedback
- positive feedback
- scale
- strategies
- sustainable
Year 13-Revision
Knowledge focus
- Paper 1
- Paper 2
- Paper 3