Geography Department

At Llantwit Major we prioritize the development of a sense of awe and wonder about the amazing world we live in. We organize trips to distant and local places. Pupils begin every year learning about current geographical news stories and issues eg they might examine the causes and impacts of a recent earthquake or cyclone on a place. They often consider what people have learnt about managing hazards or improving our lives and environments. Enabling pupils to understand tricky sustainable development issues underpin many of our lessons. Students from Atlantic College help pupils appreciate and understand how places vary so much.

NUMERACY

Investigative work is at the heart of the geography curriculum and pupils generate their own questions about places They then collect data with independence (this includes fieldwork data) and present it graphically. Many important numeracy skills are applied, practiced and refined through geography. Statistical, cartographic, graphical and numerical skills are developed through the subject. For example, pupils design fieldwork techniques with a growing understanding of accuracy, sampling procedures and reliability. Pupils search for patterns in data and offer analysis and interpretations. We are currently powering up pupils’ Digital Literacy through the increased use of GIS applications and mobile Apps to collect data.

LITERACY

The quality of pupils’ extended formal report writing has been an area of recent rapid development and improvement. We are particularly proud of our development of the use of PEEL structuring techniques, talk to write methods and ‘slow writing’ interventions to help pupils redraft, refine and structure their writing more effectively. Strategies to help all pupils to improve their spelling are also having real impacts on improving our pupils’ writing. Exemplar work will currently be available for key assessments.

Exam Practice

As with every examination subject, it is important to practice your exam skills (eg exam timing and what to include in longer answer questions). Geography papers need to be viewed in colour because you need to describe patterns on maps and interpret tricky diagrams. In this file you will find a comprehensive selection of past papers for GCSE and AS and A2 level. Mark schemes can be viewed alongside each paper so that you begin to think like an examiner. Why not test yourself against the clock and work out your own marks. Examiners’ reports (these are a challenging read!) might also be useful if you want to see what common successes, errors and problems other students have across the country. It is clear, for example, from these sources that you cannot access the highest marks unless you name examples of places, use technical terms concisely and structure longer answers well.