Developing a dartboard style approach to curriculum planning

1. Developing a dartboard style approach to curriculum planning

2. Characteristics • Teaching throughout Key Stage 3 is divided into 6 themes e.g. My World, Amazing Places, Water World • These themes are revisited in years 8 and 9 with the use of different units e.g. for the theme My World, unit titles could include Mapping and making connections in Y7, My environment in Y8 and My global footprint in Y9 • The six themes and 18 units provide the structure for the delivery of your key stage 3 geography course • The key is that each time a theme is revisited during the key stage, it is done so through a different unit which builds on existing knowledge and understanding, but is more challenging and demanding to enable and support progression

3. The process • Choose themes that are relevant to your school and your students. The most effective way to do this is through departmental discussion and consultation with students • Broad themes e.g. Dangerous World or Changing World will allow for the development of creative units. Unit titles are more specific e.g. crime, natural disasters • Order units within a theme to structure study from Y7 to Y9. When ordering units think about the complexity of the unit and what you want students to be studying at certain points of the year and at certain points of the key stage • Once the structure is in place, schemes of work can be written for each of the units, taking each year group in turn • At the beginning of the key stage, students should be aware of the six main themes and how their course of study will fit together. • Each time a new unit is introduced and throughout its teaching, reference should be made to the overarching theme to give students an understanding of how all the units fit together and how all the themes come together to form their key stage 3 geography experience

4. Is this the most effective planning model for us? Some questions for the department to consider • Will structuring the geography curriculum into themes allow us to teach the specific units we want to? • Do we have some existing resources that could be developed to fit into this planning model? • How would our students benefit from learning geography using this model? • Does this model have the flexibility to cater for our students’ needs? • Does this model have the flexibility we need to build in topicality? • Do we think this is an effective method to implement the new curriculum changes?