Geography
Key Stage 4 Geography Curriculum Intent
‘We aim to create confident individuals, who have a well-established resilience and a passion for continued self-improvement. The students who are moulded from the Humanities department at Holmesdale will be able to make informed decisions and judgements about the past, present and future. Being critical thinkers who have developed a strong set of values and responsibility’.
The Holmesdale School Humanities department is committed to providing a curriculum that is broad, balanced, challenging and fosters a love of learning. We match our curriculum to the abilities, interests, and aspirations of our students, to give every child the opportunity to strive for personal excellence. Our curriculum aims to open doors for every pupil, and we therefore value the contribution that creative, practical and vocational learning brings to a child’s development alongside the traditional subjects. Our hope is that every child who leaves The Holmesdale School has the qualifications, skills, knowledge and character to access aspirational Post-16 opportunities and to lead a life that includes positive relationships, resilience and financial independence.
The Humanities curriculum has been built around a skills and concept based design in order to develop students that have a broad understanding of a variety of topics with the subjects offered, whilst also developing a practised understanding of transferable skills for students that choose to continue Humanities subjects at GCSE. Emphasis on assessment and feedback of skills within units and across the units of years 7, 8 and 9, allow for students to practise and master those skills by the end of the key stage. This encourages students to be at a level by the start of year 10 that promotes progress and successful outcomes, as emphasised in the school’s vision.
All students are exposed to the same topics throughout all key stages. The learning objectives are progressive so that all students are able to access the higher level knowledge and skills required. As well as this, tasks within all lessons are progressive in nature to promote development. There is an emphasis on the consistently strong delivery of lessons so that all students are included and supported within Humanities. The department caters for the provision of key groups including SEND, Pupil Premium and HPA students through firstly ensuring that positive relationships are built and fostered between staff and pupils. This ensures a positive learning environment where students are confident to try, make suggestions and develop buoyancy in their subject area. Where appropriate, resources are differentiated to support the processing of a given task in order to facilitate access to the learning objective and in compliance with the schools teaching and learning priorities.
The KS4 Geography curriculum begins in year 10 and follows the same skills and concepts set out in the KS3 curriculum. The units of study are taken from the AQA Geography GCSE specification. The learning objectives and success criteria continue to be written using the command words and mark schemes from the AQA specification. Lessons are taught through three 55 minute lessons year 10 and year 11. Our curriculum will both reflect and learn from our school and community and help to enhance our pupil’s cultural capital through the extensive range of topics and themes it will cover. We will also tackle difficult issues which will give the pupils the opportunity to discuss and debate social, moral, cultural and spiritual questions.
Our aspiration is to deliver a dynamic and modern Geography curriculum in such a way that it fosters an environment and attitude that allows self-reliant, confident and independent learners to flourish.
We are confident that through the content of the curriculum and the way in which it is delivered that Geography will have a profoundly positive impact on pupil’s appreciation of the world’s complexities and their own important place within it.
Key Stage 4 – Geography Overview
