We are a highly-successful Department with four dedicated specialist teaching staff. All students receive four lessons per fortnight in Geography in Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4. We have an exciting fast-paced curriculum that builds students' knowledge, confidence and skills in Geography through the learning of place, space, scale, location and interconnections. The curriculum that students learn in Geography at Higham Lane School is an ambitious and broad one; underpinned by the disciplinary knowledge of location, human and physical concepts, skills and fieldwork.

Our aim and vision is to create empathetic global citizens who see the value in their environment and understand their role in global morality.

Students will experience a range of teaching strategies, which aim to encourage them to be independent learners. Key Stage 3 Geography homework consists of GeoPacks, in which the students will undertake their own research and tasks so that they are given an opportunity to take control of their own learning at home and allow for parents/guardians to become directly involved in students' learning.

Topics studied at Key Stage 3 include: Weather and Climate, Development, Physical Landscapes, Africa, Natural Hazards, Globalisation and Russia. At Key Stage 3 there is a clear focus on developing the students understanding of Geographical processes and skills, which means that our students will work with a wide range of resources from maps, atlases, fieldwork equipment and graphs so that the students have every opportunity to build an understanding of the subject. Each topic has been assembled around a Big Question, in which the students will develop an understanding of the knowledge learnt in their lessons in order to answer the Big Question at the end of the topic.

Geography is offered as an Option at GCSE and we currently follow the AQA course. Topics are broken down between Human and Physical Geography. Human Geography has a focus on Resources, Urban Issues and Challenges and The Economic World. Physical Geography has a focus on Natural Hazards, Ecosystems and Physical Landscapes of the UK. There is also an Issue Evaluation section, in which the students undertaken fieldwork investigations in a Human and Physical environment and will be assessed on a range of their data collection, presentation and evaluation. Much like Key Stage 3, each topic has been assembled around a Big Question, in which the students will develop an understanding of the knowledge learnt in their lessons in order to answer the Big Question at the end of the topic.

Year 7 Curriculum

The Year 7 curriculum will introduce the students to a broad range of skills and scales in Geography, with a focus on two themes of physical and human Geography that underpin everything; development and weather. This year is a very ambitious year, through Geographical skills and learning to speak and think like a Geographer. They will be introduced to a wide range of terminology and how to explain like a Geographer, particularly when completing fieldwork in 2 topics. Topics studied in Year 7 include:

• What On Earth- Earth Structure, Continents, British Isles, Geological Timescales, Ice Ages and Fieldwork.
• Mastering Map Skills- Grid References, Symbols, Scale and Latitude & Longitude.
• Diving Into Development- Development Indicators, Job Sectors, Uneven Development, Aid and BRICS.
• Wondering about Weather- Weather, Air Masses, Microclimate Fieldwork, Rainfall and Climate Change.
• Extreme Environments- Las Vegas, Antarctica, Tesso Nilo, Volcanoes and Earthquakes (Japan).

Year 8 Curriculum

The Year 8 curriculum will focus much more on geographical processes and concepts and focus in on one continent (Africa) in much more depth. Whilst the Year 7 topics gave the students the underpinning themes of Geography, the Year 8 topics will go into much more depth to make links between development, population and globalisation and weather and landscapes in Africa and in the UK. These topics show ambition through allowing the students to critically evaluate like a Geographer and coming to informed decisions. Topics studied in Year 8 include:

• Popping Population- Population Growth, Mega-cities, QOL in Mumbai and Population Control (including Russia and China).
• Gripping Globalisation- What is Globalisation, Transnational Companies, Clone Town Fieldwork, Sweat Shops, Food Miles and Diseases (Covid-19).
• Adventure Into Africa- Climate Zones, Blood Diamonds, Piracy, Nigerian Development and Tourism.
• Crazy Coasts- Coastal Processes, Landforms, Coastal Management and The Holderness.
• Raging Rivers- Long and Cross Profile, River Anker Fieldwork, Processes, Landforms, Flooding and River Management.

Year 9 Curriculum

The Year 9 year will be a ‘bridging’ year for our students to give them an idea of GCSE content but still make links to any gaps in the Key Stage 3 curriculum. This academic year also has ambition through geopolitical factors between countries and governments over land use and human welfare and students coming to well justified decisions on the morality of human welfare across different countries. The students will begin the academic year by focusing in on one area and supporting their idea of place by studying:

• Russia and the Radical North- Russian Biomes, Living in the Tundra, Arctic Take-Over, Geopolitical Pressures in Ukraine and in Russia (against migrant communities and LGBT communities) and the 2018 World Cup.
• Natural Hazards- Plate boundary processes, Living Near Volcanoes, The Impacts and Responses to Earthquakes, The Causes, Structure and Impacts of Tropical Storms and Weather in the UK. They will then make links to the Year 7 Weather topic by explaining the human and natural causes of Climate Change and how we can Mitigate against this ongoing hazard.

As we have an ambitious curriculum for our students, they will be introduced to GCSE concepts, that still have a link to the Key Stage 3 National Curriculum. They will move on to topics that will help to cover their breadth and depth including:

• The Living World: Students are introduced to ecosystems at a small-scale, looking at producers, consumers and predators and how food chains work. This will move on to large scale ecosystems with a focus on characteristics, adaptations and challenges faced in Tropical Rainforests and Deserts.

Year 10 Curriculum

For those students that have opted for Geography as their humanities option at GCSE, they will continue their learning with the AQA course. The GCSE course provides a broad overview of key events from Human and Physical Geography and provides the students with an insight in to social, economic, environmental, political and geopolitical Geography. The course develops students' analysis, justification, evaluation and research skills, all of which are invaluable to future colleges, universities and employers and this shows our ambition in allowing our students to think, speak, write and evaluate like a Geographer. Students at GCSE level will be supported with a fully comprehensive revision programme.

In Year 10, the students will further their Geographical studies with:

• The Changing Economic World: The first topic year looks in to how the economy of the world is changing and why some countries need aid and support in order to develop. The students will make comparisons between the development of a Lower Income Country (Nigeria) and the development of a Higher Income Country (The UK).
• Physical Landscapes in the UK (Rivers): This will look in to the processes, landforms, causes of flooding and management found along rivers, with a key focus on case study material. This will set the students up with the knowledge to complete rivers fieldwork at the end of Year 10, in which they will go to Carding Mill Valley to complete their fieldwork.
• Urban Issues and Challenges: The students will build on some of the knowledge they have learnt in Key Stage 3 in regards to population growth and megacities. They will look into urban redevelopment plans to improve Mumbai, the opportunities and challenges of London and urban sustainability in Curitiba. The knowledge that students have learnt in this topic will be used to complete an urban area fieldwork investigation.

Year 11 Curriculum

In Year 11, the students will end the GCSE course by studying:

• Physical Landscapes in the UK (Coasts): This will look at the processes, landforms and mass movement seen along UK coastlines. There will be a focus on case study material when looking at what coastal management has been put in place around the UK.
• Resource Management: An insight in to the pressure of resources in the UK from energy, food and water and how we are trying to improve our supply of these resources. Then a more global look in to the pressure put on water supplies, the impacts that this has on people and how countries are trying to increase water supply.
• Pre-Release: A Pre-Release booklet is released in March on a specific topic from the AQA specification, in which the students are taught in preparation for Paper 3. Previous years has seen the pre-release focus on water reserves in the UK, road development in a rainforest and slums in Africa and Asia.

Year 12 and Year 13 Curriculum

A-Level Geography has developed a fantastic reputation at Higham Lane School, with exceptionally high standards being set and outstanding results being achieved. Students will follow the Edexcel exam board and will sit three exam papers at the end of Year 13 (Paper 1- Physical, Paper 2- Human and Paper 3- Synoptic) and will complete an assessed independent investigation worth 20%. Students study:

• Tectonic Hazards and Processes
• Coastal Landscapes
• The Water Cycle
• The Carbon Cycle
• Diverse Places
• Globalisation
• Superpowers
• Human Rights

In addition, they will partake in two fieldwork trips, one to be shown how to collect data and another to collect their own data on a Physical or Human study of their choice.

Extra-curricular Activities

The Geography Department are committed to offering trips and activities to build on the ambition of our curriculum, which complement students' studies with opportunities in each year group:

Year 7: have a residential trip to the Eden Project in July, in which they will develop an understanding of the causes and impacts of deforestation. This links to their Extreme Environments topic. This trip is limited to 80 places. There is also an Enrichment opportunity to Coombe Abbey

Year 8: have a resident trip to the Jurassic Coast in July, in which they will put into practice what they have learnt around coastal processes and coastal landforms. This links to their Cracking Coasts topic. This trip is limited to 50 places.

GCSE and A-Level: students will be going to a river site (Carding Mill Valley) and urban site to collect their fieldwork and A-Level students taken to areas to collect their NEA data such as Southwold, Wales, Norfolk and Northumberland.

International Trips: The department also consistently organise international trips every academic year, with successful trips to Iceland, Italy and a West Coast USA Tour in 2023, where students visited Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. There is a trip being run in Norway in October 2024, where 40 students will spend 5 days in this country; taking part in glacier walks and boat journeys on the fjords. The following year will see the department and 50 students return to the West Coast USA in April 2026.

MR D Turley, Subject Leader for Geography