Geography Teaching Today

The scheme of work was written for Year 7 mainly in response to the new Key Stage 3 curriculum, but was also inspired by the work of Ian Mack from Birmingham City University, particularly his recent book, Eclipse. This book is designed for higher achieving students at Key Stage 3, his aim being to 'fire up the students' geographical imaginations.' The idea behind the scheme of work was to provide our new Year 7s with a great introduction to the world of geography and some of the integral concepts of the subject area. In completing the work students gain an idea of the concept of scale and how we can apply this to the various places we will study throughout Key Stage 3, and in this case 'our places and spaces'.

The work provides the teacher with a baseline assessment opportunity on 'My Neighbourhood', where students are encouraged to write about a variety of local issues such as improving the area and feeling safe. Also, many personalised learning opportunities such as the end of topic assessment are included, which requires students to write about their places; something they should be able to talk at length about!

We have recently finished teaching the work for the first time and have asked the students about their experiences and thoughts on what they have learned and received positive responses. In the future we hope to add to the existing scheme of work to examine more local issues, with an emphasis on problem solving, making predictions and similar thinking skills activities. It is hoped that these will further support the Engineering School Status at Bradfield School.

Download: Lesson Plans
Contains the entire series of lesson plans for this scheme of work, including assessment.

Download: Scale Worksheet
For Lesson One. Students view a number of sentences and images and decide upon the scale that they represent.

Download: 'Where Am I Linked To?' Worksheet 
For Lesson Three. The worksheet describes a number of activities that will make students think about interconnectivity.

Download: Place and Space Worksheet 
For Lesson Four. This worksheet introduces students to the difference between place and space.

Download: 'What Makes A Place Special?' Worksheet 
For Lesson Five. This worksheet gets students thinking about what gives a place a particular identity.

Download: My Places Worksheet
For Lesson Five. Finally, students fill in this diagram with the places that are important to them.

Photo Credit: View over Bradfield Valley by Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker. This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license.

<<< back to Teaching Ideas Index