Geography

Geography at Ernest Bevin College aims to develop well informed students who are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and impetus to understand the social, economic, and environmental dynamics of our planet Earth.

We will do this by firstly engaging the heart to develop passion and an empathy associated with the living world to teach students how their lives and actions are effected by their relationship with geography. Secondly, by engaging the head we will give knowledge of concepts, and processes happening each and every day around the world. And finally, by engaging the hands, we will develop the skills needed to assess, evaluate, and understand the world we live in, and our place within it.

The geography curriculum at EBC has been designed and organised in a way that students will benefit from interconnections and links from lesson to lesson, unit to unit, and year to year. Plans for progress have been deeply embedded through the use of regular summative assessments and key assessed tasks whereby students will be expected to demonstrate greater fluency with world knowledge by drawing on increasing breadth and depth of content and contexts. The curriculum has been designed with incremental levels of difficulty and a 7-year approach which is structured around some the great and most relevant enquiry questions of today such as ‘Do we have 12 years to stop climate change?’ and ‘Why are there people living in poverty?’.

However long students choose to study geography at EBC, they will leave the subject feeling more connected to the world, with a greater understanding of multiple geographic processes and features, and being equipped with powerful knowledge to comprehend more about the relationships between humans and our Earth.

Year 7

Autumn 
Students start Year 7 by studying their local area and asking the question, ‘what is my local area like now, what was it like in the past, and what will it be like in the future?’

The second half of the autumn term will focus on the climate of the UK and how it is changing.

Spring
Students will study ecosystems and biomes, exploring why the earth has different environments, before finding out the impact that food has on the environment.

Summer
Students begin the summer term by investigating when and why the world’s population has grown to over 8 billion people. Students then move on to thinking about how geography affects the UK in the second half of the term.

Assessment

Autumn

  • Mapping and coordinates skills
  • Tooting and UK climate graph creation
  • End of unit tests at the end of each half term

Spring

  • Extended writing – essay response. Why are tropical rainforests so special?
  • Extended writing – letter format. Can we stop world hunger? 
  • End of unit tests at the end of each half term

Summer

  • Academic debate. Is Boserip or Malthus correct?
  • UK migration bar graph creation
  • End of year summative assessment

Year 8

Autumn
The first half term explores economic activity, leading with the question, ‘why did Nissan locate in the UK?’

Students then begin learning about world development, learning why there are people living in poverty around the world. 

Spring
Students continue learning about world development before moving on to rivers, coasts and glaciers.

Summer
Students continue to learn about rivers, coasts and glaciers before ending the year by looking at energy and where the world gets power from.

Assessment

Autumn

  • Extended writing – essay response. How does tourism lead to an increase in tertiary sector jobs?
  • Decision-making exercise. How can countries boost development?
  • End of unit summative assessments

Spring

  • Extended writing. Is the world getting better?
  • Diagram and annotation of erosional processes of the creation of a waterfall and U-shaped valley
  • End of unit summative assessments

Summer

  • Choropleth map creation – global energy sources and use variations
  • End of year summative assessment

 

Year 9

Autumn
The autumn term starts by looking at globalisation – who benefits from increased connections around the world?

Students will then look at the climate crisis – are we able to stop irreversible climate change?

Spring
Students look at whether geography increases or decreases the likelihood of conflict, before learning about tectonic plates, earthquakes and volcanoes.

Summer
Students start the summer term by investigating why most people around the world live in urban areas.

The second half term looks at the Middle East and why this is an important world region.

Assessment

Autumn

  • To build or not to build?
  • Decision-making task – essay response. TNC factory build in a developing country
  • Formal letter to the government detailing influence of trees on carbon taxes and the environment
  • End of unit summative assessments

Spring

  • Extended writing – essay. How has geography enabled the USA to be more powerful than Russia?
  • Decision-making exercise. Naples evacuation plan
  • End of unit summative assessments

Summer

  • GIS mapping urban land use change in London
  • Extended writing. Israel and Palestine empathy task
  • End of year summative assessment

 

Key Stage Four Geography GCSE

At Key Stage 4 we follow the Edexcel B geography certification. We believe this certification offers a broad, enquiry-based specification, with a clear and coherent structure which we have been able to apply to the continuous progression of our 5-year geography curriculum map. The content is divided into 3 papers which the boys are individually assessed on. Specification objectives from within this content have been sequenced to make the most curriculum sense to not only enable our boys to make sense of the course as clearly as possible but to also develop a deeper understanding of geography.

Choosing the discipline of geography at GCSE will give you the opportunity to understand more about the world, the challenges it faces and their place within it. Our GCSE course will deepen understanding of geographical processes, illuminate the impact of change and of complex people-environment interactions, highlight the dynamic links and interrelationships between places and environments at different scales, and develop your competence in using a wide range of geographical investigative skills and approaches. Geography enables young people to become globally and environmentally informed and thoughtful, enquiring citizens.

The aims and objectives of this qualification are to enable you to build on your Key

Stage 3 knowledge and skills to:

  • develop and extend your knowledge of locations, places, environments and processes, and of different scales, including global; and of social, political and cultural contexts (know geographical material)
  • gain understanding of the interactions between people and environments, change in places and processes over space and time, and the interrelationship between geographical phenomena at different scales and in different contexts (think like a geographer)
  • develop and extend your competence in a range of skills, including those used in fieldwork, in using maps and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and in researching secondary evidence, including digital sources; and develop their competence in applying sound enquiry and investigative approaches to questions and hypotheses (study like a geographer)
  • apply geographical knowledge, understanding, skills and approaches appropriately and creatively to real-world contexts, including fieldwork, and to contemporary situations and issues; and develop well-evidenced arguments, drawing on their geographical knowledge and understanding (applying geography).

Assessment

The course is assessed through three 1.5-hour examination papers in Year 11. Paper 1 and paper 2 are worth 37.5% and paper 3 the remaining 25%. Each paper contains a mixture of multiple choice, short response and longer evaluation questions.

Paper 1

Global Geographical issues – Explaining atmospheric and tectonic hazards and assessing their impact. Measuring development, global inequality and a study of India How cities change over time including a study of a mega city.

Content overview

  • Topic 1: Hazardous Earth
  • Topic 2: Development dynamics
  • Topic 3: Challenges of an urbanising world

Paper 2

UK Geographical Issues -A study of both coastal and river landscapes. Settlement change within the UK a study of a major UK city. Geographical investigations, an urban study and a coastal study.

Content overview

  • Topic 4: The UK’s evolving physical landscape – including sub-topics 4A: Coastal change and conflict and 4B: River processes and pressures.
  • Topic 5: The UK’s evolving human landscape – including a Case Study – Dynamic UK cities.
  • Topic 6: Geographical investigations – including one physical fieldwork investigation and one human fieldwork investigation linked to Topics 4

Paper 3

Environmental Issues – A look at the relationship between humans and ecosystems.  Understanding the rainforest and Taiga, the threats to it and how to protect it. How we can reduce demand for energy resources and how different interest groups feel about this.

Content overview

  • Topic 7: People and the biosphere
  • Topic 8: Forests under threat
  • Topic 9: Consuming energy resources

Additional Resources