Geography

Geography Curriculum Intent 

The Geographical Association summarises Geography as “underpinning a lifelong ‘conversation’ about the Earth as the home of humankind.”  Our Geography curriculum intent is to explore our world, explain key ideas that dominate humanity’s ‘conversation’ and cultivate a strong belief that we are all a part of humankind.

Geography starts with a childhood fascination of the uniqueness of place and we will continue the joy of discovering the unknown at all scales - local through to global across multiple regions.  Place will not be studied pointlessly and disparately but against important disciplinary themes developing substantive knowledge.  All students will understand how places are the product of complex interactions between physical and human processes over time to create wonderful diversity.  Comparing and contrasting places and the people who live there will foster an awareness and empathy with their stories and perspectives.

Our intent is to challenge all of our students to understand the fundamental systems that govern Earth, including the physical processes and cycles, such as: weathering, erosion, transportation, deposition, atmospheric and oceanic circulation and nutrient cycling that have shaped our landscapes and ecosystems over eons and influenced communities for millenia.  We intend to do this through the highest quality teacher explanation as well as through a scientific, investigative lens - using transferable fieldwork enquiry and data analysis skills to help explain phenomena in a joyful and exploratory way.

We will prioritise existential questions being posed in a crowded world with critical concepts such as sustainability, climate change, development and population change woven through multiple schemas rather than being taught in isolation.  We will build cultural capital for all our students to allow them to engage with anyone on the issues that matter most to our future.  Through precise knowledge and the development of written and oral skills, all Weydon students will build confidence to express their supported opinions and also listen carefully and respond mindfully to others on current affairs.

Geography at Weydon will be a keystone subject that helps make sense of other learning.  It will help make scientific study relatable to everyday issues; it will apply mathematics to interesting phenomena, it will draw on historical context to explain our human geographies of today, it will use literature to explore the stories of people and places.  Geography will help students comprehend humanity’s greatest achievements and challenges.

Put simply, our young people at the end of KS3 will be able to describe the Arctic climate of Siberia using a climate graph, explain to you why the angle of incidence of sunlight and the albedo effect make this climate so incredibly cold, dry and windy.  How this has shaped the resulting evolutionary adaptations of flora and fauna as well as the adaptive behaviours and culture of indigenous peoples such as the Chukchi.  They would understand that Siberia and the Chukchi’s life is rapidly changing through human-induced activities such as climate change as well as Russia’s resource exploitation and Arctic port expansion, which is creating geopolitical tensions that partly explains why the USA wants to ‘buy’ Greenland.  No other subject provides such a holistic, relevant and connected way of understanding our world.