Ahead of another new academic year, it's been time to refresh the topics we teach. We've changed things around a little and dropped a topic to make space for others to stretch out a little, and have some flexibility for other events which may or many not happen.
Here's our Curriculum Journey from Y6-Y8, after which the students move up to Senior School.
We have a separate diagram for Y3-5 Geography which I'm still updating.
Thanks to the person who produced the original template whose identity I have lost over the years... if you recognise it please let me know and I'll add a credit to the post.
I'd missed the arrival of this since I last checked the website, but am thinking of using it at the start of the year with my groups.
It has a series of short videos connected to the Gapminder quiz on the SDGs.
Students are asked to take the test and then the videos take them through the reasons why they might be wrong about their thinking and they repeat the test. This is something I've done for quite a few years and it works well.
The quizzes are on the Gapminder website, although at the time of posting the site is down for scheduled maintenance. Hopefully it will be back in a week's time as I intended using the quiz with students as part of our introduction to Year 8.
I've waited a few days before posting anything about this event as it is an emerging event, and the scale of it, coupled with uncertainty about its origins was unclear at the time it happened - and remains so now, although high resolution satellite imagery is showing its dramatic impacts.
It's also entirely possible that students that some of us / you reading this may have a personal connection with the region and with people who have been caught up in the events.
There is also an element of avoiding blogging about such events when so many have lost their lives... while hazards are an area that geographers focus on because of the contents of exam specifications - or existing KS2 and 3 schemes, I try to avoid examples where lots of people have lost their lives.
There was a particularly harrowing video released early showing the Gyirong Port border crossing post, which satellite images reveal has been completely destroyed.
At the weekend, Kit Marie Rackley and Alistair Hamill recorded a special edition of the 'Espresso and Geography' podcast - available as audio and video version.
They examine the emerging physical geography of the disaster, the possible influence of a rapidly warming Himalayan climate, and why it is too early to attribute one complex event to climate change with certainty. The conversation also asks why some disasters dominate global attention while others remain largely unseen, and how teachers can discuss unfolding tragedies without turning human suffering into spectacle.
A respectful discussion about hazardous processes, climate justice, media representation, and keeping people’s experiences at the heart of geographical education.
Because this is an ongoing emergency at the time of recording and release, casualty figures and scientific explanations may change. These links prioritise official scientific information, peer-reviewed research, reputable reporting, and humanitarian support.and Geography' podcast.
As with any disaster (and there are no natural disasters), the big numbers we will see are all individual tragedies, impacting on thousands of families, schools, workplaces and friends of those who have lost their lives.
Alistair Hamill shared a link to this StoryMap earlier today, which is also a dynamic document.
Amongst the horror there were some positive stories. Rajendra Dawadi, the principal of Tribhuvan Trishuli secondary school in the Trishuli valley of north-central Nepal has been hailed as a hero by quickly evacuating his school and warning bus drivers to turn round - this reminds me of the Ukedo Elementary School near Fukushima, during the 2011 tsunami where teachers acted quickly.
I would anticipate some sort of fund-raising efforts once the new academic year begins too.
Voting closes at 11:00 am on Friday 21 August 2026
Members of the public can vote for either Shaun or Timmy
The vote relates specifically to which Aardman character will be added to this year’s storm names list
The result of the public vote will be announced on Friday 21 August and included in the 2026/27 storm names list
Predictably some people are saying this is inappropriate as these storms may cause damage and even lead to fatalities... others that we'll soon have sponsored storms... others say it's a bit of fun and raises awareness of why storms are named.
The Met Office say:
Storm naming is an important public safety tool, helping people notice, remember and discuss severe weather when it has the potential to cause significant impacts. By working with Aardman, the Met Office hopes to reach new audiences and encourage conversations about severe weather preparedness in an engaging and accessible way. The announcement also forms part of Aardman's 50th anniversary celebrations and comes ahead of the release of Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom, which arrives in UK cinemas on the 18th of September.
As a sustainability ambassador and one of Britain's most recognisable animated characters, Shaun has long been associated with themes of nature and the environment, making him a natural fit for a campaign focused on weather awareness and preparedness.
Met Office Head of Warnings and Guidance, Holly Clements, said: "Naming storms helps our weather warnings reach more people and encourages the public to take notice when severe weather is approaching. This collaboration with Aardman gives us a fantastic opportunity to engage new audiences and explain why storm naming matters, helping people understand the risks severe weather can bring and the actions they can take to stay safe."
Hopefully we won't reach 'S' in the alphabet next year....
Featured as part of our Food for Thought unit with Year 7.
The Food Foundation has released a new research reportexploring the resilience of the UK to keep providing our ‘five a day’ given the heatwaves we have had this summer - not just in the UK but across Europe - and severe weather in other parts of the world.
The UK's plan seems to be that we just buy food from other countries rather than grow it ourself. Assuming that: a) the price doesn't go up massively and b) they are happy to keep sending us food rather than using it to feed their own populations.
Long term, that doesn't seem like a good idea... and not overly resilient.
Food security is national security.
Five of the UK’s nine most-purchased fruits can be grown domestically – including apples, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and pears – but the UK grows less than 40% of domestic consumption for four of those.
For vegetables, only carrots reach a high level of self-sufficiency (94%), while the UK could grow more of the vegetables most popular with British consumers, including tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers, cucumbers, onions, broccoli and green beans, where only about half are produced domestically.
We currently import 80% of our fruit and 47% of our veg and the worsening climate and nature crisis globally means this reliance on imports poses a growing threat to our food and nutrition security.
EFL stands for Enhancing Fieldwork Learning in this event.
The EFL project team coordinates an annual Showcase event that brings together fieldwork educators from a range to disciplines to share innovations in field teaching and learning with a particular focus on the use of technology.
I last attended and spoke some years ago, talking about our work on Mission:Explore.
The 16th Enhancing Fieldwork Learning Showcase will focus on the theme of ‘Bridging the Divide’.
The free Showcase Event will be held on 8-9th September 2026.
The hybrid event will be in-person at the University of Southampton and broadcast online.
"We are pleased to confirm two Keynote speakers – Dr Nicholas Worsfold (Brunel University) and Alan Parkinson (King’s Ely Prep School / Royal Geographical Society) – who will speak about their experiences of bridging the divide from school to HE in addition to reflecting on how AI can be used most effectively in bridging digital and real world learning."
There will also be opportunities to trial innovative survey and field sensing technologies with Environmental Sensing @ Southampton: https://esas.soton.ac.uk/.
I've been teaching a lesson that I have been using for a few year now, using a clip from the BBC's Human Planet series - I have the DVD box with all the films from this series on how humans and nature coincide and the challenges that humans overcome.
Carlo Falk also made a film that tells a similar story.
In 2019 I was sent to Indonesia by the Swedish paper Arbetet as a photographer and filmmaker together with journalist Ivar Andersen. “The sulphur miners of Kawah Ijen” is a short documentary film about the toxic and dangerous work of the Indonesian miners in a volcano. In the short film we follow Beni and other sulphur miners at Kawah Ijen who shares their story with us about the hardships and the costs of working as a miner.
We hope King's students are enjoying their global travels, and not affected by some of the climate related problems across Europe, or other hazards further afield. A lot of French travel is being disrupted by wildfires.
Up to 13 million people in the UK face the long-term risk of coastal flooding due to the climate crisis, scientists have warned, with a “reasonable worst-case scenario” suggesting the need for the large-scale movement of populations away from a dramatically reshaped coast.
KCSIE 2026 talks extensively about mental health, contextual risk, children potentially at greater risk, absence, information sharing, online harms, professional curiosity and whole-school safeguarding. Yet it still fails to name climate change as a foreseeable, context-shaping condition already affecting children’s physical welfare, emotional wellbeing, attendance, safety, learning environments and family circumstances.
Kit has stepped in and produced an illustrated set of guidance materials for DSLs.
As I enter the 2nd week of my school holidays already, I remember that some schools still haven't finished for the summer and next week sees another run of temperatures in the high 20s and low 30s.
My last week of term featured some very hot and uncomfortable temperatures in my classroom.
The guidance that Kit has produced (all free to use under CC license) includes scenarios to consider.
A heatwave is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A flood is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A drought warning is not automatically a safeguarding concern. A pupil expressing climate worry is not automatically a safeguarding concern.
But any of these can become relevant to safeguarding when they affect a child’s welfare, visibility, attendance, behaviour, safety, access to learning, home circumstances or mental and physical health. That is the point KCSIE misses.
Climate risks are not always safeguarding concerns in themselves. They are safeguarding amplifiers. They can intensify existing vulnerabilities or make hidden ones more visible: housing insecurity, domestic stress, poverty, food and water insecurity, transport barriers, medical vulnerability, SEND-related needs, sensory distress, caring responsibilities, absence from education, poor mental health, social isolation, exposure to misinformation, and unequal access to safe outdoor space.
Kit outlines why context matters here: both home and school.
She then provides a series of scenarios with illustrations and questions. For example:
What questions and decisions need to be made here:
The practical staff model can remain very simple:
Notice the context.
Respond proportionately.
Record factually.
Refer if concerned.
Review patterns.
That is KCSIE applied with context, and not an extra burden.
These resources should find their way into many schools - particularly those which faced difficult choices in late May and through June.
China has several towns which are famous for the production of particular items, just as cities in the UK used to be connected with particular industries e.g. textiles in Manchester, hats in Luton etc.
SHEIN is one of the most popular websites for buying low cost (and therefore low quality) items.
There is a town in China which dedicates a great deal of manufacturing to producing items for this website.
This is a useful video describing the impact this has:
Thanks to Fiona Sheriff for the lead to this particular video.
A new book was added to the library of books made freely available by UCL Press at the end of last week. The books are available on the UCL Press website, and JSTOR.
The latest books is about bringing powerful knowledge into the classroom.
The geography chapter has been written by Dr. Alex Standish. It explores the curriculum thinking of two heads of department, who consider how knowledge is explored in their classrooms.
Ed Conway has written widely on the use of resources that creates our material world. This is connected to our Year 8 topic on consumption and the geography of our 'stuff'...
As Ed says in the introduction to the podcast - stuff matters:
The pitch behind it is each week we take an object - for the most case an everyday product you probably have inside your home - and ask a few seemingly obvious questions that turn out to have not-at-all-obvious answers. Where did it come from? How was it made? And, most intriguingly of all, what can it teach us about the world.
I’ve long had a feeling - something you’ll have picked up on if you’ve read Material World or watched much of my output for Sky News - that there are marvellous, magical, sometimes-disturbing stories just beneath the surface of the everyday items we mostly take for granted. Ponder concrete and you understand the bizarre underbelly of sand production. Consider copper and you look at the world of power afresh.
Well, to some extent that’s the idea behind Stuff Matters. Every episode is a journey deep into the rabbit holes you sometimes find yourselves swept into (well, I do at least) when considering the objects around you. So we’ve spoken to Nobel-prize winning scientists, businesses making missiles, the world’s greatest experts in how to ripen fruit, and a few other folks as well. If there is a subtitle to this effort (possibly also my entire career), it is that supposedly boring stuff is often actually tremendously interesting
That satisfying snap when you close an AirPods case is powered by one of the most important materials in the modern world.
Hidden inside are tiny magnets made from rare earth elements: obscure minerals that help power everything from smartphones and wind turbines to fighter jets and electric cars. They’re also at the centre of one of the biggest geopolitical struggles of our time
In this episode, Ed Conway follows the story of rare earths from an obscure Swedish town and the Manhattan Project to modern China, where decades of industrial strategy have given Beijing extraordinary control over a resource the rest of the world depends on.
Along the way, he explores the strange economics of rare earth mining, the environmental costs hidden behind modern technology, and the growing fear that global supply chains can be turned into weapons.
Nike sponsored kits for the FIFA men's World Cup 2026 were made from a new material made from textile waste (rather than recycled plastic bottles) to better cope with the heat at the venues.
