Geography

We live in a world of amazing beauty, infinite complexity and rigorous challenge. Our aim in RHS Geography is to open the door to this dynamic world and prepare each of our students for their role as global citizen in the 21st century. Geography provokes and answers questions about the natural and human worlds. It explores the interaction of humans and their environment on sustainability. We focus on developing investigative, problem solving, analytical, graphical, numerical and communication skills. Our department is recognised as a National Centre of Excellence in Geography Teaching and has won many awards including the prestigious Royal Geographical Society Teaching Award. We are a specialist and national leader in using GIS (computer mapping) with our students. We will provide pupils with experiences both inside and outside of the classroom, studying the real world, to compare this to theory.

Key Topics and Projects

Our topics progress from looking at local to global issues and cover both human and physical processes. In Year 7 we introduce students to the idea of exploring local places from a variety of perspectives and to consider how places change over time and the impact this has on different groups. This includes considering the implications of further urban development and tourism. We also focus on river systems and develop understanding of river flooding worldwide. In Year 8we start looking at the concept of sustainability in our everyday consumption behaviours. We focus on the fashion industry, look at its social and environmental impacts to the world around us. We then move on to look at weather and climate systems around the world and how extreme weather events impact communities and can be managed. In Year 9 we progress to examine the concept of risk-based around the study of plate tectonics. We look at how contrasting places manage risk from earthquakes and volcanic events. This is based around the GCSE syllabus, giving students a flavour of this subject as an option. We then continue with a topic on ecosystems, focusing on hot deserts and how humans use and impact these landscapes. We then look at global population dynamics including changes to birth rates and the issues relating to migration patterns.

RHS Learner Qualities

In Geography we embed the RHS learner Qualities in so much of what we do. We often get students to work collaboratively in problem solving activities, for example, developing a plan for the use of an area of rainforest. We like our Geography students to be reflective thinkers, often asking them to consider how they could improve their work and set themselves targets. Our subject deals with many sensitive social and environmental themes, including global poverty and sustainable development, and so we encourage pupils to be kind in their outlook to the world around them.

We often ask our students to be brave, such as with designing their own fieldwork and collecting data to analyse. Fundamentally we promote inquisitiveness in our students about the fascinating and complex world around them and its various interconnections.

Co-curricular

We run lunchtime clubs with quizzes, games and discussions on geographical topics, and have run numerous foreign trips over recent years, with destinations including: Italy, Morocco and Iceland.