Llantwit Major School Geography Department

Through geography pupils relate geographical thinking to their everyday lives, so that the relevance of the subject is clear to them. Pupils learn about current geographical stories and issues in the news, e.g. they examine the causes and impacts of a recent earthquake or cyclone. Thinking skills are explicitly developed through critically evaluating the impact of immigration into Britain or urban redevelopment on specific places e.g. the London Olympics. The curriculum incorporates the effective use of ICT, maps and fieldwork where appropriate. Residential fieldwork is an established part of the curriculum at KS4 and 5. We currently visit West Wales and Barcelona.

Pupils show a growing understanding of global citizenship and sustainable development. This is strengthened through the pupils' EARTH club aims to raise awareness and funding. The curriculum explicitly develops pupils' learning about community and diversity at a variety of scales. Links with the local community inform and enhance the geography curriculum. Pupils understand that environments are always changing, often threatened and sometimes improved by a wide range of processes.

Lessons are suitably challenging and teacher's aim to develop pupils' capacity to learn independently by linking their learning to big geographical concepts and questions. Investigative work is at the heart of the geography curriculum and pupils learn to ask their own questions, collect data and present it graphically. Pupils' numeracy skills are applied, practised and refined through geography as they search for patterns in their data and offer conclusions. Reflection and evaluation phases are critical and allow pupil to make links with their existing ideas. Pupils are regularly involved in the assessment process formulating their own success criteria and offering feedback on each others work.