Overview

At Firth Park, we aim for students to be provided with a wide body of knowledge and skills to develop them on their way to live a remarkable life. We want our geographers to understand the characteristics and deep interrelations with the physical and human world and apply critical thinking to make decisions on how to lead us to a more sustainable future, be it for our biomes or economic development. Our students come from a wide demographic and so already understand what it means to be a “global citizen” and we will work hard to further nurture our students' understanding of the world around them. Our KS3 curriculum is delivered mainly through topical learning, interleaving a wide range of themes and national curriculum content within one topic, enabling us to revisit and teach in greater depth and breadth as students progress through their curriculum journey.

The Curriculum 

Year 7: 




In Year 7, students dive into exploring fantastic places where they will to grips with key terms and concepts, developing their understanding of human and physical geography as well as how effects can be on a range of scales and categorised into social, economic, environmental and political. We focus on the impacts of tourism and explore in depth locations such as Ha Long Bay, The Great Barrier Reef and also Fantastic Places in the UK where other skills such as map skills can be honed. 


HT2 we develop or geographical skills and how to apply them further through the topic of GIS and me where students work with, analyse and even collect their own data through local field visits to draw conclusions and explain them. 


For the second term we move away from the UK and explore the characteristics and economic development of Africa, exploring its biomes and how flora and fauna has adapted to the conditions there. We also add a pinch of history to our study of Africa and explore how events such as colonisation has impacted its development before studying the economies of the future such as Nigeria. 


In HT4 we move across to South America’s rainforests and the Poles arctic environments as we explore endangered ecosystems. Their characteristics, importance and how we affect them is investigated before students are tasked with developing sustainable mitigation and adaptation strategies, leading us to a sustainable future. 


Then in HT5, sticking with the theme of impacts on the planet we study the Geological Epoch of the Anthropocene where we investigate how we are affecting the land, air and sea of the period we live in. Be it through plastic pollution, nuclear fallout or climate change, the causes, effects and impacts of these. We then finish the year off exploring where people on the planet are found, investigating the population distribution of a range of countries and suggesting how the physical geography of the country influenced this or whether there’s human or historical reasons at play. 


We’ll then return to the UK in HT6 to explore our own demographic, where we are found and how this is changing over time. The intent by the end of Year 7 is that our students have been exposed to the breadth of key terms, knowledge and skills ready to revisit, embed and build on moving through KS3. 




Year 8: 





Year 9: 


















GCSE: 

At Key Stage 4, students will follow the AQA specification and arrive well prepared with knowledge and skills developed introduced during their Key Stage 3 journey. At present, students will have 3 lessons a week + afterschool revision sessions along with field visits, residential and other enrichment opportunities. As in KS3 the 3 specification content is interleaved throughout their study to support retrieval and embedding of subject knowledge. 

Please see our curriculum snake for GCSE study summarising the key topics studied and the approximate time spend delivering each section of the specification. 



 



For Geography revision please see here: www.youtube.com/@GeographyHawks/playlists 


The Team: 

Mr T Wood – Director of Learning – twood1@firthparkacademy.org


Miss P Hodgins – Teacher of Geography 


Mr S Parvaze – Teacher of Geography 


Mr J Taylor – Head of Faculty – Geography specialism