A Visual Representation of the Key Stage 3 Curriculum and wider links to GCSE topics.

Rationale:

In Geography, our intent is for the curriculum to promote a curiosity about the world for our students. The curriculum will enable our students at JHNCC to be confident to challenge and ask questions about the world.
The intent is to develop a holistic knowledge of the subject at Key Stage Three in order to create a foundation to build on and develop at GCSE and beyond. This will be taught using places and theories as outlined in the diagram to the left and elaborated on in the below Long-Term plan. It is our intent for Geography to be learned inside and outside of the classroom which is why there are elements of Fieldwork implemented across all key stages. If our students do not pick Geography at Key Stage 4, we want the impact of this curriculum to be that they take a responsible attitude towards the world and adopt a life-long learning approach. We will implement this by supporting our learners to develop skills that are transferable across all subjects due to their cross-curricular links and employment in later life such as problem-solving and critical thinking. We will develop knowledge in students to enable them to thrive in lessons and create schemata. Learning will be developed from the three core subjects to develop learners’ skills, knowledge and understanding. Learners will be inspired to continue the study of Geography Post 16. We want our learners to ‘think like geographers’ - critical and reasoned thinkers about the World and the intrinsically linked areas within. To do this they will study the world through places, ensuring they get a breadth of Geography across all 7 continents and learning about theories and processes within. The impact of learning Geography this way will mean that students are continuously exposed to the inter-connected theories that underpin Geography such as globalisation, development and the key physical processes.
Our curriculum aims to:

Promote a curiosity about the world for our students and encourage them to ask questions.
Develop a holistic knowledge that will help students better understand the community and the world in which they live.
Deepen students’ understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation and use of landscapes and environments.
Provide frameworks and approaches that explain how the Earth’s features at different scales are shaped, interconnected and change over time.

Engage students with contemporary geographical issues at a local and global scale.
Support our learners to develop skills that have cross-curricular links across all subjects and in later life.
Enable students to think like ‘geographers’ [see above]

Our curriculum has been carefully mapped out to meet the requirements of the Department for Education's Geography curriculum whilst also reflecting the unique needs of our students at John Henry Newman Catholic College. We have taken a largely place approach to the Key Stage 3 curriculum to give students a wider understanding of ‘place’ and have built in the key concepts of space, scale, interdependence, physical and human processes, environmental interaction, sustainable development and cultural understanding and diversity. That being said, students still have the opportunities to explore key Geography concepts such as their disciplinary knowledge of maps and graphical displays of data whilst still reflecting our desire for learning beyond a classroom with specialised fieldwork units at Key Stage 3.

Key Stage 3:

	Semester 1		Semester 2
Year 7	Fantastic Places	Birmingham and The UK	Weather and Climate	China

Year 8	Our Oceans	Blood Sweat and Tears	Africa	Restless Earth and Fieldwork

Year 9	India	Russia	Iceland	Sustainable World

Key Stage 4:

	Semester 1		Semester 2
Year 10	Living World	Resource Management	Urban Issues and Challenges	Physical Landscapes of the UK + Fieldwork

Year 11	Natural Hazards	Changing Economic World	Changing Economic World, Mock exams and Fieldwork.	Revision and PreRelease. Exam.

Key Stage 5:

	Semester 1		Semester 2
Year 12
Human	Changing Places	Changing Places	Fieldwork	AS Exam and NEE
Physical	Hazards	Hazards	Water and Carbon	Water and Carbon and NEE
Year 13
Human	Global Governance	Global Governance	Contemporary Urban Environments	Revision / Exam
Physical	NEE + Coasts	Coasts	Revision	Revision / Exam