Geography

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Head of Humanities:

Ms G Davies

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Subject Overview

Geography at Harper Green is more than a subject. It is a lens through which our students learn to interpret, question and shape the world around them. Our geography curriculum is designed with the purpose of developing not only powerful geographical knowledge but also resilient, informed and ethically minded young people. We aim to pass on the accumulated wisdom of past generations by helping students construct a meaningful model of the world, one that enables them to make sense of their experiences and the interconnected global issues that define their lives today.

What makes the Harper Green curriculum distinctive is our commitment to balancing propositional knowledge with procedural knowledge. Through carefully sequenced topics and deliberate pedagogical choices, we ensure that students develop secure, detailed understanding of both physical and human geography, whether explaining the mechanics of a river’s meander or the geopolitical tensions shaping global trade.

We teach geography as a living, breathing subject. Our students do not just learn about places. They question them, debate their futures and consider their own place in the world. From exploring the ethics of dark tourism to analysing the climate crisis or unpicking global power dynamics, our curriculum constantly seeks to empower students with relevant, real-world knowledge. Practical skills such as map reading, data analysis, decision making and fieldwork are embedded throughout using consistent strategies and acronyms that help students think like geographers.

By rooting learning in everyday knowledge and topical case studies from fracking in the UK to population challenges in Japan we make geography accessible, thought provoking and impactful. We believe geography should inspire action, develop character and build a lifelong appreciation of our world’s complexity and beauty.

Key Stage 3 Overview

The Key Stage 3 geography curriculum at Harper Green is deliberately structured to reflect the core purpose of the subject: to help students construct a meaningful model of the world, understand the relationships between people and place, and engage critically with global challenges. The curriculum is underpinned by a balance of propositional knowledge, such as the processes behind river formation in Wild Rivers or population structure in Development and Urbanisation, and procedural knowledge which is developed through consistent fieldwork opportunities (UK Environmental Issues, Fieldwork and Enquiry) and skills practice (e.g. interpreting population pyramids, climate graphs and OS maps).

Through units such as Global Issues, Africa Is Not a Country and Superpowers, students engage with relevant and controversial issues that foster ethical thinking and real-world understanding. Recurring themes of interdependence (Our Natural World, Middle East: Trade and Tourism), sustainability (Climate Crisis, Urbanisation), and inequality (Development and Economy, Extreme Tourism) allow students to revisit and deepen their understanding across contexts. This deliberate sequencing allows students to move from foundational knowledge in Year 7 to more nuanced and conceptual thinking in Year 9. As a result, the curriculum is not only academically rigorous but also deeply values-led, aiming to develop articulate, informed and responsible young people who can think geographically and contribute positively to an increasingly complex world.

Year 7

Year 7	Autumn 1	Autumn 2	Spring 1	Spring 2	Summer 1	Summer 2
About this unit	Fantastic Places	Rivers	Natural world	Wild Weather	UK Environmental Issues	Global Issues
National Curriculum Link	Develops global locational knowledge and awareness of environmental regions and countries.	Covers the processes, landforms and features found along a river as it moves from source to mouth.	Covers ecosystems, biodiversity and interdependence within natural environments.	Introduces weather and climate patterns, focusing on physical processes and climatic hazards.	Focuses on human geography: environmental challenges in the UK and sustainable practices.	Covers resource management, environmental impact and the geography of energy use (oil and fracking).
Knowledge	Students learn about a range of globally significant places. Through comparing physical and human features, Students begin to understand how geography helps explain why places differ and how global patterns emerge. This unit sets the foundation for spatial awareness and introducing key concepts such as place, location and region that recur throughout the curriculum.	Students are introduced to the processes of river systems, beginning with the water cycle and progressing to how rivers shape the landscape through erosion, transportation and deposition. They learn how river landforms are created and altered over time. By studying a named UK river, students also begin to understand how rivers interact with human activity, influencing settlement and land use.	Students explore ecosystems as interdependent systems of life, examining how living organisms interact with their environment. They learn about the structure and components of ecosystems. Students study a variety of biomes, investigating how plants and animals adapt to harsh conditions. This unit introduces the idea of biodiversity and the delicate balance required for ecosystem survival.	Students explore the causes, characteristics and effects of weather and climate. They develop an understanding of atmospheric processes. Students investigate how weather impacts people and places. This unit introduces climate zones and begins to link weather to broader climate systems, enabling students to appreciate the power of the atmosphere.	Students examine key environmental issues affecting the UK today including flooding, air pollution, waste management and climate change. They explore causes, impacts and potential solutions. This unit introduces sustainability as a concept and encourages students to evaluate the effectiveness of different environmental strategies.	Students investigate global energy use and its environmental consequences. They study the impacts of energy consumption on people and environments, exploring both the benefits and drawbacks of different sources. The unit encourages ethical reflection, global awareness and debate, equipping students to engage with one of the most pressing issues of the modern world.
Skills	Map skills Interpreting data Location descriptions	Landform formation Explaining key processes Extended writing	Climate Graph interpretation Evaluation skills Explaining adaptations	Interpret weather data Reading weather maps Understanding climate graphs	Data analysis Extended writing – evaluation Identifying social, economic and environmental impacts	Decision making skills Explanations Identifying and explaining social, economic and environmental impacts Data interpretation
Assessment	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	1 Checkpoint Mid – Year Assessments	1 learning checkpoint	1 Checkpoint End of Year Assessments
Key vocabulary	Continent, Country, Region, Scale, Location, Human, Physical, Climate, Environment, Unique, Landmark, Distribution, Latitude, Equator, Place	River, Source, Mouth, Erosion, Transportation, Deposition, Meander, Waterfall, Floodplain, Drainage Basin, River Channel, Tributary, Delta	Ecosystem, Biome, Biodiversity, Adaptation, Interdependence, Producer, Consumer, Decomposer, Tundra, Polar, Climate, Habitat	Weather, Climate, Precipitation, Air Pressure, Forecast, Temperature, Wind, Extreme Weather, Microclimate, Front, Storm, Hazard	Pollution, Sustainability, Resource, Conservation, Flooding, Waste Management, Carbon Footprint, Recycling, Landfill, Renewable	Energy, Resource, Oil, Fracking, Fossil Fuels, Sustainability, Extraction, Emissions, Conflict, Consumption, Impact

Year 8

Year 8	Autumn 1	Autumn 2	Spring 1	Spring 2	Summer 1	Summer 2
About this unit	Coasts	Asia	Glaciers	Africa	Urbanisation	Middle East
National Curriculum Links	Covers physical geography of coasts, including processes of erosion and deposition, landforms, and human impact on coastal environments.	Covers place, space, interconnection, scale and sustainability.	Covers students understanding of key physical and human geographical features of the world.	Explores African physical geography, biomes, colonial history, cultural diversity and variation in development.	Focuses on urbanisation in the developing world, especially the causes and consequences of rapid growth in cities.	Explores human and environmental geography of the Middle East, with a focus on trade, tourism and conflict.
Knowledge	Students explore how coastal landscapes are shaped by erosion, transport and deposition. They study landforms and examine the impact of rising sea levels. The unit introduces key management strategies and invites students to debate human responses to coastal challenges.	This unit develops pupils' understanding of Asia as a diverse and dynamic continent. Through the study of physical environments, population, urbanisation, development and global connections, pupils build their understanding of human and physical geography, and their geographical skills.	This unit develops pupils' understanding of glacial processes and landscapes. Pupils investigate how glaciers shape the Earth's surface, explore the distribution of glaciated environments globally and examine the interactions between climate, physical processes and human activity.	Students learn about the richness of African geography, exploring both its physical features and its cultural and historical complexity. They challenge stereotypes by studying development indicators and African success stories. The legacy of colonialism is analysed through maps and timelines, fostering historical and geographic understanding.	Students explore causes of urban growth such as rural-urban migration and natural increase. They study urban land use models, the development of megacities and case studies like Lagos. The focus is on issues of housing, sanitation, transport and sustainability in fast-growing cities.	Students explore the geographical diversity of the Middle East and its strategic importance. Themes include oil and energy politics, desert environments, pilgrimage tourism and historical conflict. The unit links physical and human geography with current events and debates around religion, resources and power.
Skills	Students annotate diagrams Sequence landform development Assess the success of management strategies.	Extended writing Location descriptions Interpreting data Identifying social, economic & environmental impacts	Sequencing landform formation OS maps Numeracy skills Literacy skills Extended writing	Students analyse data Map skills Evaluating opportunities across Africa Literacy skills Extended writing	Interpret land use data Evaluate city sustainability plans. Decision-making tasks using evidence.	Map Skills Analyse case studies Evaluate the role of geopolitics. Extended Writing
Assessment	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	1 Checkpoint Mid – Year Assessments	1 learning checkpoint	1 Checkpoint End of Year Assessments
Key vocabulary	Erosion, Deposition, Longshore Drift, Headland, Bay, Spit, Coastal Management, Wave, Cliff, Fetch, Sea Wall, Groynes	Development, Quality of life, HIC, LIC, Distribution, Technology, Investment, Continent	Glaciation, Interglacial, Ice Age, plucking, erosion, deposition, drumlin, arete, corrie	Africa, Biome, Development Indicator, Colonisation, Culture, History, Independence, Inequality, Stereotype, Map	Urbanisation, Megacity, Rural-Urban Migration, Informal Settlement, Slum, Infrastructure, Sustainability, Transport, Waste	Middle East, Trade, Oil, Tourism, Desert, Conflict, Religion, Resource, Geopolitics

Year 9

Year 9	Autumn 1	Autumn 2	Spring 1	Spring 2	Summer 1	Summer 2
About this unit	Extreme Tourism	Climate Change	Development	Tectonics	Superpowers	Fieldwork
National Curriculum Link	Explores the impact of human activity on sensitive environments through dark tourism and ethical considerations of place and space.	Explores the understanding of how geographical processes interact and the connection between human and physical geography	Explores global development patterns, strategies to reduce the development gap, and how economic activity affects places and people.	Covers tectonic processes, the structure of the Earth and case studies of volcanic and earthquake events in LICs and HICs.	Focuses on human geography: geopolitical power, global governance and the role of countries in shaping the world order.	Applies geographical enquiry through data collection, fieldwork, presentation and evaluation of physical or human geography investigations.
Knowledge	Students investigate dark tourism, using case studies to explore how place is constructed, represented and consumed. They evaluate ethical issues; tourism impacts and the cultural significance of extreme sites.	Students will gain an understanding of climate change as a contemporary geographical issue. Pupils investigate the physical and human causes of climate change, its impacts at local and global scales, and the strategies used to adapt to and mitigate the effects.	Students explore the nature of development and its unequal global distribution. They investigate strategies such as fair trade, tourism and microfinance. This unit includes comparisons of LICs, NEEs and HICs, examining how different countries approach development.	Students study tectonic hazards including earthquakes and volcanoes, with contrasting case studies to explore causes, impacts and responses. They learn how vulnerability and capacity to respond varies between countries. The unit also introduces hazard management strategies and plate boundary types.	Students investigate the role of global superpowers such as the USA and China. They explore concepts of hard and soft power, global governance, and issues of media influence and digital control.	Students undertake a geographical enquiry, planning a hypothesis, collecting data and analysing results. This includes presentation skills and evaluation of methods and findings. They apply previous knowledge to a local investigation of either physical or human geography.
Skills	Evaluation skills Decision-making skills Extended Writing Interpreting data Map skills	Evaluation Literacy Data analysis Explanations Explaining causes of climate change	Interpret graphs and maps Evaluate using case studies Oracy Literacy	sequence plate interactions Interpret hazard impacts Case study comparison. Extended Writing	Interpret maps and sources. Comparative writing Literacy Debating key issues	Conduct an enquiry Collect data, Data analysis Evaluation
Assessment	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	1 Checkpoint Mid – Year Assessments	1 learning checkpoint	1 Checkpoint End of Year Assessments
Key vocabulary	Tourism, Place, Dark Tourism, Ethics, Impact, Representation, Perception, Responsible Travel, Chernobyl, Auschwitz.	Climate Change, Sunspots, Orbital Change, Deforestation, Volcanic Activity, Greenhouse Effect, Enhanced Greenhouse Effect	Development, Poverty, Microfinance, Aid, Trade, Economy, Fair Trade, Investment, Infrastructure, NEE.	Earthquake, Volcano, Tectonic Plate, Plate Boundary, Oceanic, Continental, Crust, Mantle, Inner Core, Outer Core, Destructive, Constructive.	Superpower, Geopolitics, Global Governance, Hard Power, Soft Power, Influence, Conflict, Media, Propaganda, Cybersecurity.	Fieldwork, Hypothesis, Data Collection, Primary, Secondary, Method, Presentation, Evaluation, Graph, Conclusion.

Key Stage 4 Overview

At Key Stage 4, students follow the AQA GCSE Geography specification. The course develops students' understanding of both physical and human units to develop their understanding of the discipline and therefore have a better understanding of the world.

For paper one students will study 'Living with the Physical Environment' which will cover Natural Hazards, Living World – with a focus on Hot Deserts and Tropical Rainforests and Physical Landscapes of the UK – with a focus on Rivers and Coasts.

For paper 2, students will study 'Challenges in the Human Environment.' Allowing students to understand the implications of development across the world through units on Urban Issues & Challenges – with a focus on Manchester and Rio, The Changing Economic World – with a focus on Nigeria and the UK and The Challenge of Resource Management – with a focus on Food in Mali and the UK.

For paper 3, students will study 'Geographical Applications.' This unit is synoptic and allows students to apply their knowledge, understanding and skills they have gained over the course and complete fieldwork to an Urban Environment and River Environment.

Year 10

Year 10	Autumn 1	Autumn 2	Spring 1	Spring 2	Summer 1	Summer 2
About this unit	Natural Hazards	Urban Issues and Challenges	Urban Fieldwork	UK landscapes- Coasts	UK landscapes – Rivers	River Fieldwork
Knowledge	This unit will cover a range of natural hazards starting with tectonic hazards and how they can impact HIC’s & LIC’s/NEE’s on a different scale. They will be able to explain the cause of these events. Following this we will study weather hazards and the impacts of more extreme weather. Finally, students will study climate change and its impact on the wider world.	Students will understand the growth of cities within HIC’s and LIC’s/NEE’s. They will be able to explain the cause of rapid urbanisation and the impacts then evaluate strategies used to sustainably manage these issues. We will focus on Manchester and Rio.	Students will apply their knowledge of urban issues and challenges through practical application in a city environment. We will explore regeneration across Manchester and students will collect data that will help them to prove or disprove our hypothesis.	Students will understand key coastal processes that shape the landscape. They will be able to describe erosion, deposition and transportation that occurs along the coast. Explain the formation of landforms and evaluate how we manage the coast.	Students will understand the key processes that take place within a river allowing it to shape the landscapes around it. They will explore the role of erosion, deposition and transportation. They will be able to explain the formation of landforms and how we manage a river to stop flooding.	Students will apply their knowledge learnt in the river’s unit through a fieldwork investigation into changes with river depth and sediment size across a number of locations and be able to make connections to their own understanding of how rivers change.
Skills	Graph analysis Photo inference Evaluative writing Describing distribution Annotation of diagrams Evaluation	Map skills Evaluation of opportunities and challenges Interpreting a figure Identifying social, economic & environmental issues	Data collection, Data analysis and interpretation Evaluation	Using photo evidence to explain and describe the impacts of mass movement Identifying key landforms on OS maps Explain their formation	Using photo evidence Identifying key landforms on OS maps Explain their formation Maths Skills Evaluation of management	Secondary data and other sources to evaluate Data collection Analysis and interpretation Fieldwork enquiry
Assessment	2 learning checkpoints	2 learning checkpoints	1 Checkpoint PPE examinations of content covered so far	2 learning checkpoints	1 learning checkpoint	1 Checkpoint PPE Examination of content covered so far
Key vocabulary	Hadley Cell, Ferrell Cell, Polar Cell, Pressure, Tropical Storm, Extreme Weather, Atmospheric Circulation, Primary & Secondary effects.	Megacity, Urbanisation, LIC, HIC, NEE, Squatter Settlement, Sustainability, Integrated transport.	Brownfield site, Greenfield site, Dereliction, Urban greening, Urban sprawl, Commuter, Inequalities, Regeneration.	Abrasion, Attrition, Solution, Hydraulic Action, Weathering, Spit, Bar, Longshore Drift, Hard engineering, soft engineering.	Fluvial processes, Discharge, Cross profile, long profile, Flood plain, Levee, Meander, Ox Bow Lake, Relief Channels, Hard and soft engineering.	Quantitative, Qualitative, Hypothesis, Methodology, Systematic Sampling, Primary data, Secondary data.

Year 11

Year 11	Autumn 1	Autumn 2		Spring 1	Spring 2		Summer 1
About this unit	Resource Management	Changing Economic World		Living World – Tropical Rainforests & Hot Deserts	Pre – Release Materials		Unseen fieldwork & Revision
Knowledge	Students will understand the importance and distribution of the world’s vital resources (Energy, Water and Food). We will then focus of food resources in a HIC vs an LIC/NEE and the sustainable methods used to increase the supply.	To compare an NEE/ LIC with a HIC economy to see the differences. We will study Nigeria and how industrial change and TNC’s have impacted development within the country. We will then focus on the UK’s economy and how migration and infrastructure increased development and the impact of the north south divide		Students will understand the difference in different scale ecosystems learning about small scale UK ecosystems to tropical rainforests and hot deserts. They will understand characteristics, adaptations and management of these biomes.	The pre-release will be a topic chosen by AQA from the main topics taught across the specification and pupils will be expected to draw on their knowledge of these topics		We will support students in understanding the unseen fieldwork questions in paper 3 by ensuring they understand a variety of data collection and presentation methods. Following this we will recap key units of work to ensure students will be as prepared as possible for their upcoming GCSE’s
Skills	Map distribution Analysis Interpretation of graphs Evaluating factors impacting global distribution of food, energy and water	Graph analysis Use of atlas, data and a range of maps. Evaluation of issues. Interpretation of figures.		Explanation of Interrelationships, Interpretation of food webs/ food chains, Photo analysis, Climate graphs, Data interpretation Analysis and evaluation	Evaluation of an issue Graph interpretation, Data presentation		Fieldwork skills, Data presentation Data analysis Data collection
Assessment	2 learning checkpoints (middle and end of unit), PPE examinations of content covered so far.		Checkpoints for each unit of work. Further PPE as final support before examinations			GCSE Examinations
Key vocabulary	Agribusiness, Energy mix, Food miles, Fossil fuels, Organic food, grey water, Abstraction, seasonal farming, hydroponic, aeroponic.	Demographic transition model, Development, Microfinance aid, TNC, Multiplier effect, North south divide, Science Park, Business Park, Trade links, Deindustrialisation, globalisation.		Ecosystem, Biome, Abiotic, Biotic, Distribution, Sustainability, Subsistence, Commercial farming, Permafrost.	This will depend on the content of the pr-release booklet.		Data collection, data presentation, data analysis, data evaluation.