Introduction
This section of the website features lesson plans, images and other materials and ideas from KS1-3 teachers who have been involved in curriculum making. You may like to download and use the materials and perhaps even share your own ideas.
What is curriculum making?
When we talk about curriculum making we refer to the creation of interesting, engaging and challenging educational experiences which draw upon teacher knowledge and skills, the experiences of students and the valuable subject resource that is geography. As a teacher you are a key to all of this and this area of the website has been created to assist you in your role of curriculum maker. Here are the four main areas:
Teaching Ideas: Lesson sequences created by teachers who have attended our curriculum making courses.
Making Geography Happen: An Action Plan funded project about good quality, innovative curriculum-making. It focuses on the work done by students in geography lessons and how this contributes to their wider understanding of the world.
Key Stage 1-3 Curriculum Making Courses: Covering topics such as subject leadership and how to use geography as a resource, these are excellent CPD resources for those new to curriculum making or those who wish to take it further.
Glossary: Clarifying the terms used in curriculum making.
Why curriculum making?
We believe that geography has a distinctive role to play in the school curriculum. However, its potential and promise can be compromised if it is seen only as a body of subject 'knowledge-to-be-delivered'. Instead, we see geography as a resource that can enable students to better understand the world and their place in it. This is a kind of deep understanding that has an enquiry led approach to learning at its heart. In this view, geography teachers perform a delicate balancing act, drawing upon the student's experiences, the subject resource and their own knowledge and skills.
The following diagram captures the essence of curriculum making.
Enquiry
As we have seen, the enquiry approach to learning is at the heart of curriculum making. Margaret Roberts (2003) has shown how this approach contains four central aspects which include the creation of a 'need to know' through the use of an engaging stimulus, the collection and use of data, making sense of that data, and finally, reflecting on learning in order to apply it to future enquiries. This process has been captured in a single diagram as shown below (adapted from Roberts, 2003).
Sharing your work
As you engage with the resources in this section of the website, it is hoped that you will adapt them to formulate your own ideas and materials. If so, do let us know and send us what you have done via the GA Ning. We would love to see your ideas added to this website in the future.
Further Reading
Roberts, M. (2003) Learning Through Enquiry. Sheffield: The Geographical Association.
Lambert, D. and Morgan, J. (2010) Teaching Geography 11 – 18: A Conceptual Approach. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Featured Article
Teaching Ideas
The resources in this section have been created by teachers attending our Curriculum Making courses during 2007 and 2008. We are passionate about Living Geography and localised curriculum making and this area of the website shows what it begins to look like.
We have chosen examples of teachers' work which, we believe, demonstrate how teachers have localised the activities and underpinned what has been done with careful, purposeful thought. The chosen examples are NOT intended to be held up as exemplary or 'perfect' but as examples of curriculum development which teachers have been willing to share.
We hope they will inspire in different ways, but they are not supposed to be 'copied'. Interrogate them and see where they work for you (for your school and for your students). The resources can be used at different key stages - think how you might adapt or 'improve' them to suit your purposes.
Most relevant links
Curriculum Making VLEs
Talk Curriculum Making
Discussions: 2