The Geography Department

What is Geography? 

Geography is about people and places.  It is the teaching of the physical environment, the people living in the environment, and the interaction between the two.

The Aims

The aims of the department are to foster an understanding of the world we live in, the physical processes that operate, how our interaction can affect the world and how we are able to deal with the consequences of these interactions.  This is achieved by a diverse range of teaching techniques and getting the pupils involved as much as possible.

The Curriculum

Geography is taught from pre-prep onwards, initially as part of the Humanities block, and often in conjunction with History, demonstrating the close link between the two subjects.

In years 3 and 4 Geography is taught as a discrete subject and the emphasis moves onto subjects that are purely Geographical but that also demonstrate cross curricular links, such as Mountains and Water.

In year 5 industry is the topic of study.  Initially, perhaps, a topic that would seem inaccessible to 10 year olds, but that includes looking at the food we eat and finding out how many Air Miles pupils’ food has travelled, as well as finding out about the chocolate and the tourist industries.

In years 6 to 8 the focus moves onto the thematic topics required for Common Entrance, namely Mapskills, Settlement, Plate Tectonics, Weather and Climate, Environmental Issues, Industry and Geomorphological Processes (rivers and coasts).

Opportunities for practical work

There are many opportunities for the pupils to investigate first hand the topics being studied in class, whether it is a walk around school to investigate weathering, a trip into Brackley to look at urban land use and a local area study, or an investigation around school of a local Microclimate.  Pupils get to do their own primary data collection and to understand how they achieved the results they did.

Opportunities for trips

Trips are organised throughout the school and recent trips out for different year groups have included the following:

The Living Rainforest in year 2

A Water Treatment Plant in year 4

Cadbury World in year 5

Milton Keynes Discovery Centre to look at the sustainable city in year 7

Opportunities for fieldwork

Geography is the only subject at Common Entrance for which a field work project is compulsory and this is carried out in year 8.  The project is based on the annual three day trip to The Isle of Purbeck in Dorset .  This is a wonderful trip to a UNESCO World Heritage site to investigate the physical coastal landforms and well as look at the impacts of tourism.  The pupils get to do lots of data collection, visit some of the most beautiful scenery in southern England and to produce a project out of the results collected.

ICT in Geography

There are many opportunities to use ICT in Geography.  It is used as a research tool to find information out, for example with a year 8 report on the floods in England in 2007.  It is used for producing newspaper reports or Powerpoint presentations, such as with Hurricane Katrina in year 6 and San Francisco earthquake in year 7.  It is used to complete pc based worksheets, as in the work on slums in year 7.  It is also used to complete the CE projects, where a range of skills including Excel and Word are involved.