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Geography · KS3 to A Level · £6.99

Grounded Geographers,
Confident Schools

Secondary geography department handbook — KS3 to A Level

One book for the whole department: the head of geography who has to fund fieldwork and defend the curriculum, and the teacher explaining longshore drift to a wet Year 9. Built on what the specifications actually say, read from the current documents.

£6.99The whole playbook, 73 pages

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Read before publication by serving senior leaders, in school.

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Schools that have bought from Empower Educators include Nottingham High School, Northampton High School GDST and Sutton Valence School.

Everything else this site has for Geography: Geography teaching resources

  1. 1 Curriculum
  2. 2 Place
  3. 3 Process
  4. 4 Enquiry
  5. 5 Standard
Cover of Grounded Geographers, Confident Schools

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Geography is two subjects in one department — the physical and the human — and a scheme of work that treats them as interchangeable topics costs marks in both. The content looks modular, which is exactly why so many curricula are a rotation rather than a sequence.

This booklet is written for the whole department at once. A head of geography can read it as a curriculum and quality-assurance document; a teacher can open it at the page they need before a wet Year 9 lesson on coasts. The specifications were read from the current documents, and fieldwork is treated as what the boards actually examine: a way of reasoning, tested on data the student has never seen.

Written to
The current GCSE and A Level geography specifications, read in full
Intended for
department CPD, planning and curriculum review
Extent
73 pages · 70 sections

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Contents

All 70 sections

Taken from the book’s own contents page, so the page numbers are the real ones.

THE CASE

01 Two Subjects, One Department p3
02 What Geographical Thinking Actually Is p4
03 Where Geography Departments Drift p5
04 What Excellent Geography Teaching Looks Like p6

THE THEORY

05 Pillar 1 — Curriculum: What Builds on What p7
06 Pillar 2 — Place: Case Studies That Do Something p8
07 Pillar 3 — Process: Explaining How, Not Just What p9
08 Pillar 4 — Enquiry: Fieldwork Is a Way of Reasoning p10
09 Pillar 5 — Standard: One Department, One Mark Scheme p11

CURRICULUM

10 Key Stage 3: The Three Years GCSE Depends On p12
11 The GCSE Two-Year Sequence p13

PHYSICAL

12 Rivers and Coasts: The Same Three Processes p14
13 Hazards: Why the Same Event Kills Different Numbers p15
14 Weather, Climate and the Living World p16

HUMAN

15 Population and Migration: Teaching a Contested Topic Well p17
16 Urban Geography: Growth, Inequality and Regeneration p18
17 Development, Trade and the Resource Question p19
18 Climate Change: Teaching Certainty and Uncertainty Together p20
19 Teaching Contested Issues Without Losing the Room p21

FIELDWORK

20 Planning Two Enquiries That Meet the Requirement p22
21 Data Collection, Sampling and the Decisions Students Should Make p23
22 Presentation, Analysis and the Anomaly p24
23 The Fieldwork Questions in the Written Paper p25

SKILLS

24 Maps: A Quarter of the Marks, Taught in Year 7 p26
25 Data, Graphs and the Statistics Students Avoid p27
26 GIS and Digital Geography, Used Properly p28

THE BOARDS

27 The Boards Compared, from Their Own Specifications p29
28 Command Words, Paper 3 and the Issue Evaluation p30

TEACHING

29 Explanation, Modelling and the Diagram Problem p31
30 Questioning and Extended Writing p32
31 Retrieval in a Subject With Too Much to Remember p33

ASSESSMENT

32 Assessment That Matches the Objectives p34
33 Feedback, Data and Impact p35

EVERY STUDENT

34 SEND, EAL and Access to Geography p36
35 High Attainers and the Scale Move p37

FOR LEADERS

36 The Head of Geography p38
37 Quality Assurance and the Department Rhythm p39
38 Developing Geography Teachers p40
39 Technology, GIS and AI in Geography p41
40 Inspection and the Geography Department p42
67 The Geography Department Improvement Plan p69

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE

41 Curriculum, Teaching and Skills p43
42 Fieldwork, Assessment and Leadership p44

OUTSTANDING LESSONS

43 Year 7: The Drainage Basin as a System p45
44 Year 9: Two Earthquakes, Same Magnitude p46
45 GCSE: Reading an Unfamiliar OS Extract p47
46 GCSE: Somebody Else’s Fieldwork Data p48
47 GCSE: The Issue Evaluation p49
48 Inclusive Geography: Same Demand, Different Route p50

THE TOOLKIT

49 Templates 1–4 — Curriculum and Planning p51
50 Templates 5–8 — Fieldwork p52
51 Templates 9–12 — Case Studies and Places p53
52 Templates 13–16 — Skills and Data p54
53 Templates 17–20 — Teaching and Discussion p55
54 Templates 21–24 — Assessment and Leadership p56
55 Template 25 — Department Self-Evaluation p57
56 The Teacher’s Page — Geography p58

TROUBLESHOOTING

57 Common Geography Department Problems — Teaching p59
58 Common Geography Department Problems — Department p60

QUALIFICATIONS

59 The Geography Qualification Landscape p61
60 International Geography and the Fieldwork Question p62
61 Progression, Destinations and Honest Advice p63

THE GEOGRAPHERS

62 Eight Geographers, and What Each One Gives a Lesson p64

THE MODELS, DRAWN

63 Four Models Students Must Be Able to Annotate p65

THE FOUR BOARDS

64 A Level Geography: Four Boards, Four Different Shapes p66
65 GCSE Geography and the Fieldwork Requirement p67

THE EVIDENCE

66 The Research a Geography Department Can Actually Use p68

CLOSING

68 Recommended Reading and Where to Check Things p70
69 References and Evidence Base p71
70 One Department, Two Disciplines, One Argument p72
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