Curriculum Portal

neurologyYou need to know

• Geography studies the Earth and people's interactions with it: physical geography examines natural features and processes, human geography examines people and places, and environmental geography examines relationships between people and the natural world.
• Geography influences daily life through weather, transport and settlement, and supports careers such as meteorology through weather forecasting, town planning through decisions about land use, and farming through understanding climate, soil and water.
• The seven continents are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Europe, North America, South America and Oceania, and the five oceans are the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Southern.
• Great Britain is the island containing England, Scotland and Wales; the United Kingdom also includes Northern Ireland, while the geographical term British Isles includes Great Britain, the island of Ireland and nearby islands.
• The eight compass directions, clockwise from north, are north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-west, west and north-west.
• A map's key explains the meaning of symbols, colours and lines representing features such as roads, settlements and woodland, while its north arrow indicates orientation.
• Map scale expresses the relationship between distance on a map and distance on the ground, and a scale line shows the ground distance represented by a measured length on the map.
• Eastings are vertical grid lines whose values increase eastwards, northings are horizontal grid lines whose values increase northwards, and four-figure grid references identify squares using the easting followed by the northing at the bottom-left corner.
• Six-figure grid references divide each grid square into tenths across and upwards, giving a location to the nearest 100 metres on an Ordnance Survey map with one-kilometre grid squares rather than an exact point.
• A geographical information system, or GIS, stores, displays and analyses geographically located data in layers, such as roads, buildings and population, to reveal patterns and support decisions.
• Russia is the world's largest country by area, extends across Europe and Asia, and covers 11 time zones.
• The Ural Mountains mark part of the boundary between Europe and Asia, while Siberia extends across much of northern Asia and contains extensive taiga forests, tundra and some of the world's coldest inhabited places.
• Population density is the number of people per unit area, and most Russians live in western Russia, where the generally milder climate, transport connections and major cities such as Moscow support settlement.
• Svalbard is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean north of mainland Europe, with glaciers, tundra, polar bears and Arctic foxes, and its largest settlement is Longyearbyen.
• Glaciers are masses of land ice that move under gravity, moraines are accumulations of material transported and deposited by glaciers, and fjords are deep glacial valleys flooded by the sea.
• The Svalbard Global Seed Vault stores backup samples of crop seeds from seed banks worldwide, and its remote, geologically stable location and cold conditions help protect this resource for future food production.
• The Thar Desert lies in north-west India and eastern Pakistan, with the Aravalli Hills along its eastern margin and the Indus River to its west.
• The Thar Desert has sand dunes, low and unreliable rainfall and summer temperatures that can exceed 50°C, yet it is one of the world's most densely populated deserts, where water storage and irrigation support settlement and farming.
• Antarctica surrounds the South Pole and is the world's largest desert because it receives very little precipitation, despite being almost entirely ice-covered and experiencing extreme cold and strong winds.
• Tourism, research and fishing can damage Antarctic environments through pollution, habitat disturbance and pressure on food webs, so protection includes controlling visitor activities, managing waste and regulating fishing.

• Classify geographical scenarios as human, physical or environmental geography, justifying each choice with evidence and recognising where branches overlap.
• Explain how geography influences daily activities and supports particular careers, linking each career to relevant geographical knowledge or skills.
• Locate and label the seven continents, five oceans, selected countries, Russia, Svalbard, the Thar Desert and Antarctica using maps or atlases, describing their relative positions with compass directions.
• Orient a map to the ground using a compass and its north indicator, and interpret mapped features accurately using the key.
• Measure straight-line distances with a ruler and curved routes with string or the edge of paper, then use the map scale to convert measurements into ground distances with appropriate units.
• Read and write four-figure and six-figure grid references on Ordnance Survey maps, recording eastings before northings and estimating tenths accurately for six-figure references.
• Select and combine relevant GIS layers to investigate a geographical problem, identifying spatial patterns and using the mapped evidence to justify a decision.
• Interpret physical maps, population density maps and satellite images to describe landscapes and settlement patterns, including the concentration of Russia's population in the west and the Thar Desert's relationship to rivers and cities.
• Explain how environmental conditions create challenges and opportunities in the case-study locations, using specific evidence such as Russia's size, the Thar Desert's water scarcity and Svalbard's suitability for seed storage.
• Interpret mapped data on Antarctic temperatures, wildlife and human activity to identify patterns and propose evidence-based protections and research precautions, including waste removal, avoiding wildlife disturbance and preparing for severe weather.