Geography is taught within the College by a team of three full time specialist teachers, Mr Jason Pink (Head), Mr Andrew Sedgewick, Mr Keith Hicks and Mr Rob West. The department is housed within three large, airy, dedicated teaching rooms. The rooms are all equipped with interactive white boards. There has been a lot of investment in ICT resources in the last few years.

The use of ICT is an important part of the department’s teaching and learning. Many of the lessons taught with in the department use PowerPoint Presentations and Promethean software. Resources are shared centrally via the College Portal and we work collaboratively to prepare teaching materials. We use Google Earth, the WWW and specialist software on a day-to-day basis. Students in all key stages are taught to give presentations using PowerPoint and in KS4 the second piece of coursework is a presentation to camera. Each room has a video player and DVD player attached to the interactive whiteboard. The department has an automated weather station from which data is downloaded daily.

Fieldwork is an important part of the department’s work. At present there is the opportunity for all year 9 students to take part in a field trip to Hunstanton to study coastal processes. KS4 spend a week in the Lake District undertaking field work. At AS students take part in a residential field trip to the Field Studies Council centre at Preston Montford near Shrewsbury.

 

All teaching takes place in mixed ability groups.

KS3

The KS3 curriculum is very varied. We do not follow a specific course or set of text books but have developed, and continue to develop, a scheme of work using the department’s strengths and interests. We try and make the subject matter as relevant to the students as possible using local case studies as often as possible.

In year 7 we focus on developing student’s skills and knowledge. In year 8 we concentrate on developing students understanding of Geography. The students follow a story, with one lesson lead into another and the whole years work flowing from one part to the next, rather than a series of distinct modules. We focus on encouraging the students to make links between the different parts of the subject rather then seeing each section as a distinct module of work

In year 9 the emphasis is upon the application of skills and knowledge; using what they have learned in years 7 and 8 to  undertake a variety of role play and decision making activities. The students have the opportunity to investigate and make decisions about the 2012 London Olympics, the management of HIV and AIDS in LEDCs, the plans to build new homes in the local area, the Three Gorges Dam in China, coastline management and the problems facing Japan.

We use a variety of assessment methods in order to allow all students the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do and achieve the best results possible; including research assignments, essays, presentations, fieldwork, role plays and decision making exercises.

KS4

Students will be following the AQA A specification from September 2009.

There are three units of work:

• Unit 1 – Physical Geography
• The restless earth (tectonic processes, earthquakes and volcanoes)
• Weather and climate
• Coasts
• Unit 2 – Human Geography
• Changing Urban environments
• Tourism
• The development gap
• Unit 3 – Local fieldwork investigation

KS5

Keystage 5 Blog for students: http://wjecgeogsawtrycc.blogspot.com/

 

At KS5 the students are following the WJEC specification. It leads on quite naturally from the GCSE course.

At AS there are two units of study:

• G1 ‘Changing Physical Environments’
• Investigating climate change
• Investigating tectonic and hydrological change
• G2 ‘Changing human environments’
• Investigating population change
• Investigating settlement change

At A2 there are two further units of study:

• G3 ‘Contemporary Themes and Research in Human Geography’
• This allows students to follow their own interests and carry out their own research. It is taught via a tutorial system.
• G4 ‘Sustainability’
• Sustainable food supply
• Sustainable water supply
• Sustainable energy
• Sustainable cities

Hopefully you now have a flavour of the Geography Department at Sawtry Community College; our ideas and ethos.

Geography CAREERS

coming soon..