Thread by @SeanDunnGeog

CURRICULUM PLANNING THREAD!
I am extremely excited to be teaching our new topic "21st Century Issues" to Year 8 next term. I thought I'd talk about how we planned this and hopefully it helps someone else going through this large task.
#edutwitter #geographyteacher

1. First we thought about what global issues we wanted to teach about and listed them as a department. This generated a large list we would then break down to make our topic. Department time and joint planning was integral to our KS3 curriculum overhaul.

2. We knew we wanted to start with the concept of scale, so our students understand geographical issues can be local, regional and global. This was a great opportunity to include guided reading (credit: @MrHand__ )

3. Climate change is first. We look at causes, consequences and responses (small-scale and global). We decided to teach this towards the end of KS3 when our students have a more complex understanding of Geography due to the importance of this issue. Links to GCSE and A Level.

4. Health issues. This links with our study of health issues at GCSE and A Level. Great opportunity for plotting data on graphs for skills and analysing patterns with links to prior learning of development. We study HIV and Malaria at GCSE but decided to look at COVID for KS3.

5. COVID may be a contested choice. We thought about this carefully as it is still ongoing and it would require regular planning and updates before teaching. We listened to our students as they wanted to learn about this. Links to skills where we map the outbreak in China.

6. We chose to create a decision-making exercise which evaluates the initial responses to the pandemic by the UK and various countries around the world. We finish looking at vaccine inequality which uses prior knowledge of development.

7. Next we look at the Middle East. This region was underrepresented in our old curriculum and looking at conflict links nicely with contested places at A Level. This was an opportunity to work on our atlas skills by mapping key events in the region.

8. This links with the refugee crisis lessons. Currently this focuses on the Syrian refugee crisis but we want to expand this with other examples around the world through independent study. We thought it was an important issue for our students to understand.

9. We finish by looking at the strategies being used to tackle poverty around the world. This seemed like a nice way to finish the topic with links to the past few lessons. We want students to continue practising evaluation as it is something our students struggle with the most.

10. There are so many geographical issues that we could have looked at, proven by our initial list which included so much more. However, we made the decisions based on what we want to teach and how it can be best sequenced (in our opinion) to create the best learning experience.

11. We will meet as a department after we have taught this and do an evaluation. I expect there to be updates, but I am still really excited about teaching this. I hope you have enjoyed this insight into our curriculum planning process for a topic and it’s been helpful! :)