Qualification: GCSE
Examining board: Edexcel
Course specification:
Course leader: Miss Russell
Years taught: 9, 10, 11
What will I be doing on this course?
Geography stimulates an interest and a sense of wonder about people, places and the environment. It is a valuable subject that will help pupils to make more sense of a complex and dynamically changing world - changes that could one day affect you as well as others.
Geography is a very practical subject, with the opportunities to learn new skills such as modern computer based mapping (called GIS), map skills, interpreting photographs, fieldwork skills, presenting, enquiry, role play and debating techniques.
Fieldwork, and work which takes place outside of the classroom, is an important part to the subject of Geography. Fieldwork opportunities, both locally and nationally, allow pupils to enhance and develop understanding of the topics that they have learned about in class from a real world approach. This will allow them to see things from a new perspective and of course have fun.
Units covered
Year 11
- Geographical skills and Challenges (25%)
- Geographical Skills
- Challenges for the planet
- Climate Change
- Sustainability
- The Natural Environment (25%)
- The Physical World
- Coastal Landscapes
- River Landscapes
- Tectonic Landscapes
- A Wasteful World
- The Human Environment (25%)
- The Human World
- Economic Change
- Settlement Change
- Population Change
- A Tourist's World
- Investigating Geography (25%)
Students will investigate a geographical topic in the field and produce an investigation under controlled and timed conditions.
Year 9 & Year 10
- Paper 1: Living with the physical environment
- The challenge of natural hazards
- The living world
- Physical landscapes in the UK
- Geographical skills
- Paper 2: Challenges in the human environment (35%)
- Urban issues and challenges
- The changing economic world
- The challenge of resource management
- Geographical skills
- Paper 3: Geographical applications (30%)
- Issue evaluation
- Fieldwork
- Geographical skills
How this course is assessed
Year 11
Unit 1
This unit is assessed through a 1-hour, tiered, written examination with a total of 54 marks.
There are 25 marks in Section A and 29 marks in Section B. The examination will contain a mixture of question styles.
Of the 54 raw marks available, up to 4 marks are awarded for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG).
Unit 2
This unit is assessed through a 1-hour 15-minute, tiered, written examination with a total of 69 marks.
There are 45 marks in Section A and 24 marks in Section B. The examination will contain a mixture of question styles.
Of the 69 raw marks available, up to 4 marks are awarded for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG).
Unit 3
This unit is assessed through a 1-hour 15-minute, tiered, written examination with a total of 69 marks.
There are 45 marks in Section A and 24 marks in Section B. The examination will contain a mixture of question styles.
Of the 69 raw marks available, up to 4 marks are awarded for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG).
Unit 4
This unit is an internally assessed unit assessed under controlled conditions.
Students complete one of the fieldwork tasks from the list provided by Edexcel. They must write it up under controlled conditions.
The task is marked out of a total of 50 marks, across the following areas:
- purpose of investigation
- methods of collecting data
- methods of presenting data
- analysis and conclusions
- evaluation
- planning and organisation.
Year 9 & Year 10
Paper 1
Written exam: 1 hour 30 minutes
88 marks (including 3 marks for spelling, punctuation, grammar and specialist terminology (SPaG))
Paper 2
Written exam: 1 hour 30 minutes
88 marks (including 3 marks for SPaG)
Paper 3
Written exam: 1 hour 15 minutes
76 marks (including 6 marks for SPaG)
Pre-release resources booklet made available 12 week