Oak KS3 Curriculum - taking shape ready for the Autumn

 

The Geographical Association has been producing a KS3 Curriculum for the Oak National Academy over the last year. 

The previous year,  the GA worked to develop a whole Primary curriculum, which can be viewed and downloaded here. I wrote part of this and also acted as a subject reviewer.

For the KS3 project, I have been working for the last year as a subject reviewer. 

This means that I have been able to read through quite a few of the units and help develop them to be ready for uploading. 

These will be helpful for those who need a framework for their work, units to plug in and use straight away or models to use for future planning. It may save time for some.

Oak Primary Geography project - an update

By the start of September 2025 and the new academic year, a full suite of resources will be available for Primary Geography on the Oak National website. 

These will all be free to download.

There are 6 units for each of years 1-6. 36 units all fully resourced with slide decks, worksheets, quizzes and videos.

All units have been approved by Oak and will be appearing on the website in the next month.

They have been developed from an original model produced by Paula Owens and Julia Tanner by a team of writers and reviewers and a production team at the Geographical Association.

I am very pleased to have been part of the Oak Primary team. I wrote one unit, and helped shape a number of others through working as a reviewer.

Some of my images were also used in units.

Curriculum Explainer

Our curriculum nurtures pupils’ personal and everyday geographies, sparking their curiosity about the world, and guiding them to explore places and processes beyond their existing knowledge. 

Our curriculum is structured around carefully planned pupil progression, encompassing the knowledge and skills required by the national curriculum in a range of regional and thematic units. 

Key concepts and locations, including our local area, are revisited in increasingly complex contexts. Simultaneously, the curriculum imparts knowledge and skills of enquiry, mapwork, and fieldwork, whilst being contextualised and modelled throughout. 

This versatile curriculum connects learning to real-world contexts, empowering students with the knowledge to grapple with complex issues, such as climate change and sustainability, at both a local and global scale. 

The curriculum aims to enable pupils to know and understand more about the world, and view it through a geographical lens.

Here's my unit;

It includes some themes which will need to be tackled in various ways in many schools following the recent events in cities around the country.

And here are the subject principles...

• Focuses on the knowledge and skills specific to geography, including:
  • World knowledge (encompassing locational, place, environmental, physical and human processes) developed through thematic and place-based studies at a range of scales;
  • How geographical knowledge originates and is revised.
• Develops pupils’ knowledge and application of geographical investigation skills, including:
  • Using maps, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), spatial statistics, aerial and satellite imagery;
  • Using the fieldwork enquiry process and associated data collection, presentation and analysis techniques.
• Develops understanding of contemporary geographical debates and real world challenges through organising, connecting and applying what they have been taught.