“Geography underpins a lifelong conversation about the earth as the home of humankind” – Geographical Association
Our Curriculum
Our Intent
By the end of Year 11 students at Pendle Vale College will:
- Have substantive, disciplinary, and procedural knowledge in Geography as they progress through their learning journey
- Be able to use skills to analyse, interpret, develop explanations, evaluate, and make judgements which can be transferred to wider aspects of life and further careers. Students have opportunities to develop these skills throughout the curriculum in Geography, for example students evaluate to what extent soil is important in year 7, to what extent earthquakes limit Nepal’s development in year 8, to what extent responses to a tropical storm are effective in year 9, to what extent cold environments can be developed in year 10 and to what extent strategies to overcome the North-South divide are effective in year 11. Understanding, analysing, evaluating data and justifying an argument is at the heart of Geography and can be applied any further career where data has to be analysed.
- Students will be able to be curious about the world around them and have the skills to be able to answer questions about the environment and people
Three Pillars of the Curriculum
We fully believe that our curriculum contributes to the development of all students at Pendle Vale College:
- Currency: we utilise quality first teaching, robust assessment and accountability and well designed learning schemes.
- Core skills: we develop essential life skills in students including literacy, oracy and map skills
- Character: cultural capital is fostered through a series of deliberate and planned opportunities that include visits to enhance the curriculum, such as Chester Zoo in year 10, which supports their learning on Ecosystems, and on site fieldwork opportunities, such as investigating biotic and abiotic features on the school ground.
Learning and Understanding
We seek to instil a true love of learning in all our students by:
- Promoting a love of learning through effort based praise;
- Developing secure classroom environments where failure is accepted and embraced as an essential part of learning;
- Providing a Geography curriculum that allows our students to be curious: Students learn through fieldwork investigations where they ask questions and consider the ‘big picture’; students explore the school grounds and consider local ecosystems, flooding factors and microclimates; they explore the region and investigate coastal and urban environments; students learn through bringing the outdoors inside as the use of their photos and videos is encouraged to enhance their learning and build their schemas with real life examples.
Topics have been intelligently sequenced based on the following rationale:
- Students gain access to a broad and balanced curriculum upon entry in Y7;
- The most powerful Geographical topics are taught in order to make learning relevant to students and these are used to add breadth as well as depth to understanding.
- The order of the topics allow progression and are synoptic with deliberate links with previous topics.
- Skills are also progressive and linked across topics, e.g. map skills and latitude and longitude are revisited throughout KS3 and KS4.
- Students develop a strong foundation of knowledge and skills in year 7 that is needed because the sequential topics build on that foundation knowledge and skills.
- The fieldwork techniques that they master develop in complexity and the demands of the analysis that is required increases with each study.
Personal Development
We fully believe that our curriculum contributes to the development of students at Pendle Vale:
- Social development: encouraged through collaborative learning across the Geography curriculum including practical, group and team work in Geography lessons
- Moral development: promoted through the effective teaching of conflicts across the Geography curriculum including learning about whether nuclear energy is the answer to our energy crisis and whether the rainforest should be developed or not.
- Spiritual development: students learn about how fair trade and international agreements can protect the rainforest and they make decisions over which products they purchase.
- Cultural development: this is addresssed throughout the curriculum, e.g. when students learn about cultures from all over the world, such as when they learn about the importance of soil through the views of different stakeholders, when students learn about the World Cup in the Middle East and they review the opinions of different stakeholders and when they learn about the stakeholders involved in the deforestation in the Amazon.
- Personal development: Students learn about risk and risk mitigation through the many fieldwork opportunities that are provided; year 7 weather, year 8 woodland, year 10 ecosystems and year 11 coasts and regeneration. Students in year 7 construct a poster on the dangerws of nuclear energy to enable their understanding of energy conservation and climate change mitigation. Students in year 8 create their oen ecotourism sustainable development resort. This enables them to learn about and take part in active citizenship; it develops them as individuals.
Equality
Our Geography curriculum ensures that any potential equality issues are mitigated by:
- Providing knowledge organisers and bespoke revision guides for all students
- Having a curriculum that is not focused on a specific gender because the content will not necessarily drive an interest from that gender and it will promote stereotypes. Males and females are treated the same; high expectations and high challenge
- Quality first teaching strategies are employed for all students such as; recapping previous learning, using models and examples, having guided student practice, checking for understanding, avoiding gimmicks. Prior attainment does not restrict what students can achieve.
- Quality first teaching strategies are also utilised with students with SEND. Specific strategies are also utilised.
Homework
Our belief is that homework should be a deliberate practice of what has been modelled and taught in lessons, as well as spaced revision to ensure students are developing high level skills alongside powerful knowledge.
Careers, Opportunities and beyond the Curriculum
Opportunities are built in to make links to the world of work to enhance careers guidance:
- An ecosystem visit to Chester zoo in year 10
- On site fiedwork opprtinteis in year 7,8 and 10
- A lesson in each scheme of learning as a link to potential career opportunity
We teach beyond the exam specification by:
- Ensuring that the KS3 curriculum simultaneously develops broad and in-depth study of the subjects in a timely fashion. Students are given opportunities to build models and bring in real life examples. They study the concepts on the school grounds; types of Geography, water conservation
- Providing important context so that students gain a framework on which to learn from, such as through studying the conceptson the school grounds; flooding factors, ecosystems, water conservation. Students are encouraged to bring in real-life examples and/or suggest analogies.
Research Led
The Geography curriculum has been influenced by:
- Retrieval Practice (Mark Enser 2019 and Kate Jones 2019)- our curriculum enables opportunities to construct schemas and address misunderstandings. Spaced practice, low stakes quizzes and the use of visual schemas enable links in learning to develop. Retrieval is not passive but is essential in constructing knowledge.
- Reduce class competitition (Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts 2019)- to enable students to perform at their best class competition should be minimised as it it too ‘high risk’, so disengages some learners. Instead, if competition is to be used ‘personal best’ competition should be utilised, but strategies such as low stakes quizzing and praise for effort is most effective.
Overview of critical knowledge students will learn in this subject from Y7-Y11. The curriculum is planned giving thought to the optimum knowledge sequence required for building secure, effective schema.
A powerful knowledge-rich curriculum teaches both substantive knowledge (facts, knowing something is the case, what we think about) & non-declarative or procedural knowledge (skills & processes, knowing how to do something, what we think with).
Bodies of knowledge are essential to underpin skills. In some subjects, further distinction between substantive knowledge (domain specific knowledge gained e.g. knowledge of the past) & disciplinary knowledge (how the knowledge is gained e.g. historical reasoning)
Curriculum Plans
Year 7
Autumn Term
Theme
- What is Geography? (Introduction to Geography)
- Where is Nelson on the map? (Map skills)
- Our rocky world (Weathering and rocks)
New Learning
- Physical and human geography (introduction to the terms and the key concepts)
- Identifying the location of continents and oceans
- Introduction to map skills (longitude and latitude, points of a compass, 4 and 6 figure grid references, map symbols and distance and scale.
- Weathering and rocks (Different types of rock, different uses of rock, different types of weathering)
- Application of compass direction skills (being able to describe the location of one continent from another)
- Interpretation of maps (describing the location of places using longitude and latitude).
- Interpretation of photographs (identifying types of weathering through photographic evidence.)
Knowledge Revisited
Key Stage 2:
- Human and physical geography
- 4 figure grid references
- Continents and oceans
Knowledge Developed
- Using continents knowledge to describe the location of places using longitude and latitude.
- Apply knowledge of map skills to describe the location of Castleton in weathering scheme.
Spring Term
Theme
- How Should Happisburgh be managed? (coastal management)
- How could the future be nuclear? (Nuclear energy)
New Learning
- Coasts (types of waves, landforms created by erosion, landforms created by deposition, hard and soft engineering, example of coastal management – Happisburgh.’
- Resources (renewable and non-renewable energy including examples and advantages and disadvantages, fracking, nuclear energy including examples and advantages and disadvantages
- Decision making (deciding which type of coastal management should be used in Happisburgh – which is the most sustainable).
- Interpretation of graphs (analysing a variety of graphs to understand the different energy uses around the world.
Knowledge Revisited
- Map skills
- Chemical weathering
Knowledge Developed
- Application of weathering knowledge to understand how coastal landforms are created.
- Application of map skills knowledge to describe the location of Happisburgh
Summer Term
Theme
- Why is the UK weather so changeable? (UK weather)
- Where should I locate a new seating area around Pendle Vale College? (Fieldwork)
New Learning
Weather and climate (difference between weather and climate, how to measure weather, weather forecasts, types of climate.)
Weather fieldwork (Microclimate enquiry – fieldwork project)
Interpretation of maps (Interpreting maps to identify different climate zones.)
Introduction to fieldwork (on site fieldwork experiencing using weather equipment to collect data)
Application of numeracy skills (Creating a bar chart using data collected in fieldwork and using statistic skills such as mean, median, mode and range to analyse results.
Knowledge Revisited
Key Stage 2 Weather
Knowledge Developed
Application of longitude and latitude to explain the climate of locations.
Year 8
Autumn Term
Theme
- What is life like in the Middle East? (Middle East)
- Are there more opportunities than challenges if you live in a megacity? (Asia/Africa)
New Learning
- Middle East (Location of countries in the Middle East, how developed is the Middle East, sustainability in Dubai, characteristics and challenges of hot deserts.)
- Megacities in Asia/Africa (what is urbanisation and what are the causes, megacities, Beijing opportunities and challenges, Lagos opportunities and challenges, natural increase and migration – push and pull factors.)
- Application of GIS (Using GAPMINDER to analyse data in countries.)
- Introduction of climate graphs (understanding the different components of a climate graph)
- Interpretation of maps: Introduction of choropleth maps
Knowledge Revisited
- Sustainability
- Continents and oceans
- Map skills
Knowledge Developed
Interpret climate graphs and comparing the climate graphs of different locations.
Spring Term
Theme
- Why were the effects of the earthquake so severe in Nepal, a LIC? (Nepal earthquake)
- How healthy is the woodland ecosystem at Pendle Vale College (Fieldwork)
New Learning
- Nepal (Location of Nepal, glaciers and how they erode the landscape, tourism, climate change impacts on glaciers, plate tectonics, effects of Nepal earthquake)
- Ecosystems (World biomes, local ecosystems – fieldwork project, introduction to tropical rainforests, food chains and food webs, animal and plant adaptations, uses of the rainforest, shifting cultivation and deforestation.)
- Application of map skills (describing the location of Nepal)
- Interpretation, application of fieldwork skills (On site ecosystems fieldwork using field sketch and quadrat)
- Numeracy skills Completing grouped bar chart based on results and completing analysis of these graphs
Knowledge Revisited
Management strategies
Knowledge Developed
- On site fieldwork write up opportunity
- Drawing graphs from results and result analysis
Summer Term
Theme
How are animals adapted to live in the Tundra?
New Learning
- Tundra biomes (where are tundra biomes, what is Svalbard, opportunities and challenges in Svalbard, management of challenges in Svalbard.)
- Application of numeracy skills (statistical analysis)
- comparing climate graphs (comparing the climate graphs of different regions.)
- Application of GIS (Using google earth to analyse human and physical landmarks in tundra regions.)
- Climate graphs (interpretation of a climate graph to identify challenges.)
Knowledge Revisited
- Biomes
- Climate graphs
Knowledge Developed
Using climate knowledge to identify climate zones, but also explain the reason for their climate e.g high latitude areas.
Year 9
Autumn Term
Theme
- Superpowers
- Globalisation
New Learning
- Superpowers (what makes a country a superpower, which countries are superpowers, Russia physical and human geography, Pakistan human and physical geography)
- Globalisation (causes of globalisation, sweatshops, TNCs including case study coca cola, fair trade, tourism and sport.)
- Map skills (Using longitude and latitude data to describe the location of places).
- Application of graphs (creating choropleth maps and pie charts)
- Numeracy skills (Completing percentage increase and decrease.)
Knowledge Revisited
- Describing the location of countries on a map
- Factors affecting climate
Knowledge Developed
Revisit factors affecting climate but understand how the factors that affect this climate create challenges and opportunities for countries.
Spring Term
Theme
- China
- Antarctica
New Learning
- China (location, climate, population, challenges of population and management strategies to population, south China sea, employment structure)
- Antarctica (a decision-making exercise) lessons
- Map skills (Using longitude and latitude data to describe the location of places).
- Application of graphs (creating choropleth maps and pie charts)
- Numeracy skills (Completing percentage increase and decrease.)
Knowledge Revisited
- Population distribution and population density
- Ecosystems / biomes
Knowledge Developed
Revisit population distribution and density but developed to understand how different methods have been used to manage population growth e.g China one child policy.
Summer Term
Theme
- Tectonic Hazards
- How do rivers change the landscape?
New Learning
- Hazards (plate boundaries, earthquakes including effects and responses, strategies to reduce the effects of earthquakes)
- Rivers (long and cross profile, features of a drainage basin, types of erosion, types of transportation, landforms created by erosion, landforms created by deposition, hard and soft engineering.)
- Application of map skills (describing the location of Haiti and Japan)
- Comparison: (comparing effects of earthquakes in HICs and LICs)
- Interpretation, application of fieldwork skills (Off site fieldwork opportunity on Marsden Park river, calculating the cross section)
- Numeracy skills (Creating scatter graph based on findings from river fieldwork)
Knowledge Revisited
- Plate tectonics, management
- Type of erosion
- Weathering
Knowledge Developed
- River erosion and river management (developed from management strategies in year 7)
- Fieldwork, off site, more complex data than on site fieldwork
Year 10
Autumn Term
Theme
- Ecosystems
- Tropical Rainforests
- Cold Environment
New Learning
- Ecosystems (food webs and food chains, biomes)
- Tropical rainforests (Animal and plant adaptations in TRF, causes and impacts of deforestation and sustainable management methods)
- Cold environments (Location and climate of cold environments, opportunities and challenges of cold environments and why they are valuable)
- Map skills (Using longitude and latitude data to describe the location of places).
- Climate graphs (Creating and comparing climate graphs)
- Numeracy skills (Analysis deforestation rates and using this data to make comparisons.)
Knowledge Revisited
Biomes, megacities:
- Definition &distribution
- Challenges
- Opportunities
Knowledge Developed
- Biomes – characteristics and pattern (using more complex patter language).
Spring Term
Theme
- Urban
New Learning
- Urban issues and challenges (Urbanisation, push and pull factors, natural increase Rio opportunities and challenges and management strategies, Manchester opportunities and challenges and management strategies, Blackpool regeneration)
- Map skills (Using longitude and latitude data to describe the location of places).
- Climate graphs (Creating and comparing climate graphs in Manchester and Rio)
- Numeracy skills (statical analysis.)
Knowledge Revisited
- Megacities
- Erosion and management
- Weathering
- Map skills
Knowledge Developed
Megacities:
- Application to another city
- Greater depth challenges e.g saying which challenges are more severe
Summer Term
Theme
- Coasts
New Learning
- Coasts (types of waves, landforms created by erosion, landforms created by deposition, hard and soft engineering, example of coastal management – Holderness.’
- Fieldwork (Off site paper 3 GCSE fieldwork and write up)
- Introduction to fieldwork (off site fieldwork experiencing using weather equipment to collect data)
- Application of numeracy skills (Creating a radar graph and proportional flow symbols using data collected in fieldwork and using statistic skills such as mean, median, mode and range to analyse results.
- Application of GIS (Using google earth to compare findings with secondary data).
Knowledge Revisited
- Erosion and management
- Map skills
Knowledge Developed
Coasts:
- LSD
- Spits & bars
- Examples of management
- Weathering application to coasts in depth
Year 11
Autumn Term
Theme
- Changing economic world
New Learning
- Changing economic world – development (Development indicators, causes and consequences of uneven development, strategies to reduce the development gap.)
- Changing economic world – Brazil (location and importance, industry in Brazil, TNCs, aid and relationships with the wider world.)
- Changing economic world – UK (industry, science parks, changing rural landscapes)
- Interpretation of maps: comparing development using choropleth maps
- Numeracy skills (statical analysis.)
- Locational skills describing the location of Brazil)
- GIS: (Analysis of live population pyramids)
Knowledge Revisited
- On site FW, Natural resources energy,
Knowledge Developed
- Greater understanding of development indictors and comparisons, post-industrial economy
- TNCs – more detailed understanding of their location and the reason TNCs choose to locate factories where they do
- Industry – more complex analysis of types of industry (developed from year 9)
Spring Term
Theme
- Resource management
- Water
- Fieldwork
New Learning
- Challenge of resource management UK (overview of energy, water and food and the challenges and opportunities of each)
- Challenge of resource management water (Global overview of water opportunities, challenges and management strategies).
- Map skills (Using longitude and latitude data to describe the location of places e.g Lesotho).
- Climate graphs (Creating and comparing climate graphs in Wakel and Lesotho)
- Application of graphs (creating, analysis and evaluating choropleth maps and pie charts)
Knowledge Revisited
- Economic activity and development.
Knowledge Developed
- Resources- water: a large-scale strategy and sustainable strategies.
- Sustainability – now understand how sustainability can have range of effectiveness.
Summer Term
Theme
Revision and preparation for GCSE
- Pre-release to support Paper 3
New Learning
- Revising and revision to support pre-release and paper 3 knowledge
- Pre-release topics are not known in advance of the pre-release date
Knowledge Revisited
- All content revisited for GCSE and pre-release topic focus.
Knowledge Developed
- Fieldwork application – using onsite knowledge to complete off site fieldwork, write up and analyse results using.
For further information regarding our curriculum please contact the admin team at reception@pendlevale.lancs.sch.uk