Welcome to the Geography Department:
Geography Trip to Italy which included visiting Pompeii and the Amalfi coast
| Director of Learning KS4 & Teacher of Geography | Mr M. Heathcote |
| 2iC Humanities | Mr L. Pilcher |
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.
Autumn Term 1: Our Local Area
Enquiry question: What is my local area like now, what was it like, what will it be like in the future?
Assessments
- Key assessed task: Mapping and coordinates skills- Mapping Tooting
- End of unit test summative assessment.
Autumn term 2: Weather and climate
Enquiry question: What is the climate of the UK like and how is it changing?
Assessments
- Key assessed task- Tooting and UK climate graph creation.
- End of unit test summative assessment.
Spring Term 1: Ecosystems and biomes
Enquiry question: Why does the Earth have different environments?
Assessments
- Key assessed task: Extended writing, essay response- Why are tropical rainforests so special?
- End of unit test summative assessment.
Spring term 2: Food
Enquiry question: What impact does my food have on the environment?
- Key assessed task: Extended writing piece, letter format: Can we stop world hunger?
- End of unit test summative assessment.
Summer Term 1: Population
Enquiry question: When and why did the world’s population grow to 7.7 billion people?
Assessments:
- Academic debate: Is Boserup or Malthus correct?
- End of unit test summative assessment.
Summer term 2: The UK
Enquiry question: How does geography affect the UK?
Assessments:
Key assessed task: UK migration bar graph creation.
End of year summative assessment.
Autumn term 1: Economic Activity
Enquiry question: Why did Nissan locate in the UK?
Assessment
How does tourism lead to an increase in tertiary sector jobs? Essay response
End of unit summative assessment
Autumn Term 2 and Spring Term 1: Development
Enquiry Question Why are there people living in poverty?
Key assessed task 1: Decision making exercise: How can countries boost development?
Key assessed task 2: Extended writing answer- IS the world getting better?
End of unit summative assessment
Spring 2 Term and Summer 1 Term: Rivers, coasts, and glaciers
Enquiry question: How has water shaped the UK?
Assessments
- Key assessed tasks: Diagram and annotation of erosional processes of the creation of a waterfall and U-shaped valley
- End of unit summative assessment
Summer 2: Energy
Enquiry question: Where does the world get its power from?
Assessments
- Choropleth map creation- global energy sources and use variations
- End of year summative assessment
Year 9 Autumn Term 1: Globalisation
Enquiry question: Who benefits from increased connections around the world?
Assessments
- Key Assessed Task- To build or not to build? Decision making task; TNC factory build in a developing country essay response
- End of unit summative assessment
Autumn Term 2: The Climate Crisis
Enquiry question: Do we have 9 years to stop irreversible climate change?
Assessments
- Key Assessed task: Can trees fix the climate crisis? Formal letter to the government detailing influence of trees on carbon taxes/ the climate.
- End of unit summative assessment
Spring Term 1: Geographies of Conflict
Enquiry question: Does geography increase or decrease the likelihood of conflict?
Assessments
- Extended writing essay style: How has geography enabled the USA to be more powerful than Russia?
- End of unit summative assessment
Spring Term 2: Tectonics
Enquiry question: Can we ever know enough about earthquakes and volcanoes to live safely?
Assessments
- Decision making exercise- Naples evacuation plan.
- End of unit summative assessment
Summer Term 1: Urbanisation
Enquiry Question: Why do most people around the world live in urban areas?
Assessments
- GIS mapping urban land use change in London
- End of unit summative assessment
Summer Term 2: The Middle East
Enquiry question: Why is the Middle East an important world region?
- Key Assessed Task: Extended writing Israel and Palestine empathy task
- End of Year Summative Assessment
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.
What you will study:
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 and
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
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 multi choice, short response and longer evaluation questions.
Why choose GCSE 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).
(Reference Edexcel B geography specification)
Geographical skills
The skills learnt in geography cover a broad spectrum of disciplines including maths, English, science, art, economics, and statistics. Not only will the content covered give you a better understanding of your place in the world but the graphical, numerical, cartographic, data interpretation, investigative and analytical skills will equip you to understand more and go further in life. It is for this reason that geography is consistently seen as an extremely desirable subject to places of higher education such as colleges, university and within apprenticeships.
