UNIVERSITY
Collegiate School
Geography
Welcome to the Geography Department at UCS, where from the classroom, our students explore the world and beyond.
Our Vision
The Geography department at UCS Bolton creates opportunities for all by creating an environment in which students enjoy their geography lessons through a purposeful, challenging and engaging curriculum. We are committed to providing an inclusive, stimulating and inspiring environment, which sparks student curiosity and supports their learning, which is embedded by high expectations. Students will explore their own place within the world and their values and responsibilities to others, to the environment and to the sustainability of our planet.
We aim to encourage student's critical thinking and questioning skills to develop an interest and sense of wonder about the human and physical features of our world. Students gain the necessary skills to navigate a successful future.
What Our Students Will learn
Our spiralled curriculum is designed to cover a series of geographical concepts across the academic year in order to give students a broad and enriched experience of geography. Each topic has an overarching enquiry question, this encourages students to apply their prior knowledge yet instil curiosity. GCSE students follow the AQA specification. Please see below our geography curriculum roadmap:
How you can support your child’s learning in Geography
Students will have a knowledge organiser for each of their schemes of learning. Students can use these to test themselves on the core content throughout the term.
Learning Support
How you can support your child’s learning in Geography
- Students will have a knowledge organiser for each of their schemes of learning. Students can use these to test themselves on the core content throughout the term.
- Question your child on what they have learnt in lesson and take an active interest in what they have been learning.
- Encourage them to watch the news regularly to keep up to date with the latest weather events, migration and developmental news. Ask them questions about how the latest news ties into their geography lessons.
- Students at KS3 receive one piece of additional learning per fortnight. This is always based upon recent geographical events taking place in the news. For example, the Californian wildfires in January 2025. This piece of work is literacy focused, whereby students must read an extract then answer questions to check their understanding.
- Students at KS4 receive one exam style additional learning per week. They range from low stake exam questions to high stake exam questions. These aim to test pre-requisite knowledge from previous topics they have studied in lessons. These are then marked on a weekly basis so that students are given specific feedback and made aware of how they can further improve their answers.
Books you can purchase
At GCSE level, we follow the AQA specification.
• GCSE AQA Geography Revision & Practice
• BBC Bitesize AQA GCSE (9-1) Geography Revision Guide
Teaching Geography
"Quality First Teaching" underpins our approach, ensuring lessons are engaging, inclusive, and tailored to foster deep understanding across all key stages.
Academic Structure
Parental and Community Engagement
We actively engage with parents and the community, sharing resources and updates to support our students' educational journey.