Geography
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“The study of Geography is about more than just memorising places on a map. It’s about understanding the complexity of our world, appreciating the diversity of cultures that exists across continents. And in the end, it’s about using all that knowledge to help bridge divides and bring people together.” Barack Obama
The intent of geography at Laurel Park is to provide students with essential and transferable skills to deal with, and understand, the rapidly changing world in which they will be living. The world is increasingly interconnected, with large scale economic movements and migration across the globe, and within the country.
Geography gives students the opportunity to be able to understand the reasons for these changes, and their consequences. We want to create discerning and inquisitive geographers who can use their geography skills to interpret the world around them. We want our students to see a world beyond North London, so that they can access it, if they choose to. We want to develop students' love of learning and research, as well as helping students to create their own enquiries, making justifiable decisions, cost-benefit analyses and being able to see issues from a range of viewpoints, not just their own. We seek to create global citizens who are aware of, and passionate about, the diverse physical world in which we live.
Geography is unique as a subject in that it encourages students to consider both arts and science elements. It encourages a multi-disciplinary, synoptic approach to any consideration and decision. It encourages students to develop a wider vocabulary. Students who leave school with geography qualifications will be able to combine both qualitative and quantitative data, analyse information and make appropriate decisions as well as reflecting on case study examples to evaluate the successful management of geographical issues. A geography student will not be afraid of facing new information in whatever format (social media, text, graphics, graphs, diagrams, images, spoken word, interviews and videos). This makes geographers flexible, dynamic and independent employees, ready for the changing world they will face.
As a department we define the deep knowledge our students need and help them recall it by using both knowledge and skills for all year groups. Use of regular assessment for learning, particularly retrieval activities, quizzes and plenary tasks also helps us check on knowledge and understanding and enables us to plan our subsequent lessons.
Students will sit an assessment at the end of each half term at KS3 and also sit an end of year exam in the subject.
Our facilities
● 5 Humanities classrooms
● Textbooks for all students
● Field trips in KS3 and KS4
● Access to 30 chromebooks within the department
● Use of SENECA for revision and homework
Curriculum
The Geography curriculum booklet can be downloaded here: