Geography
Key Stage 3
The Geography curriculum at JFS is inspiring, geographically academic, covers real-world issues and relevant for young learners at our school in the 21st Century. It aims to promote curiosity about the world and inspire wonder and passion for geographical issues. The curriculum engages learners with a range of geography processes and how these interact to create changing physical and human landscapes over time. It enriches their locational, spatial, and environmental understanding.
We aim to equip our students with geography understandings, place knowledge, and geography skills for the rest of their lives. Topics across KS3 are sequenced to build challenge in geographical processes & skills and widen students' understanding from local/familiar/engaging places to understanding trends in wider regions across the world. Key geography ideas, knowledge, and skills covered are:
Geographical themes that are revisited throughout KS3 include global earth systems, changes in geological time, natural hazards, changes to the carbon cycle and the modern warming era, land conversion and ecosystem degradation, resource use, globalisation, demographic change, inequalities and social injustice across the development spectrum, and solutions to geographical challenges.
Students are taught to understand established geography models and theories, to critique them, and apply them to real-world trends.
Students are also supported to develop their skills in geography enquiry and field work, and modelled appropriate primary and secondary research skills together with analysing data, reaching conclusions, and evaluating the enquiry process.
Students practice understanding real-life geographical challenges and making geographical decisions that build understanding of geography solutions, including options for the future.
Contextual knowledge of places studied is built across key stage 3 geography, including locational defining physical and human characteristics. National Curriculum required places are studied – Africa (Yr 7 – Egypt, Yr 8 – Ghana, Yr 9 - The Sahel), Russia (Yr 9 Resources and Yr 9 Awesome), Asia (Yr 7 – Fantastic Landscapes (Israel), Yr 8 population (Philippines & South Korea), Yr 9 World trade (China, India and Bangladesh).
Geographical Skills include building students' use of globes, atlases, maps (including OS maps and access to OS online ‘digimaps’), GIS, and a wide range of graphicacy skills.
Our curriculum provides comprehensive, accessible, and challenging resources for a wide range of learners, equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and cultural capital for future learning and employment. We support students in developing memorizing/revision skills to aid their assessment preparation. We want our students to be independent thinkers and develop into informed and engaged citizens.
In line with the national curriculum for Key Stage Three geography, students are supported to understand the processes that give rise to key physical and human geographical features of the world, how they are interdependent, and how they bring spatial variation and change over time.
Key Stage 4
Geography is an academic subject that aims to improve your understanding and appreciation of the environment in which you live. The GCSE course will help you develop many basic and specialised skills, from numeracy and literacy to data analysis and decision making. You will also gain graphical and practical skills such as field work, atlas work, data and map interpretation, and improve your IT skills. The Geography Department uses a wide variety of activities to help you explore geographical issues, and you will often work in groups that will help you to develop your communication and teamwork skills, which are important for later life. Geography combines really well with a large number of subjects across the Science and Arts divide, such as Maths, Science and History, and often complements these subjects as similar skills are used.
Key Stage 5
The A Level geography curriculum inspires our students to be engaged and understand the world around them and to think critically about world issues and broaden their knowledge of place. Students will grow as independent thinkers and as informed and engaged citizens. The Edexcel specification takes an issues-based approach enabling students to explore and evaluate contemporary geographical questions.
The type of work involved in each lesson will focus on a key geography question. We will study the geography processes, links to geography places, and linked debates and assessment points. Lessons involve discussion, group work, geography skills, writing up your processes, and support in essay and exam practice.