Our innovative Geography teachers work hard to find new ways to deliver GCSE curriculum content to students in all year groups and last term two activities really stood out.

Simone Saville, a representative from the Tyne River Trust visited King James with an excellent working drainage basin model to help students understand flooding and the long profile of a river. Sessions were attended throughout the day by Year 7 students who had been studying rivers, so seeing the working model was an excellent way to revise the topic before their assessment. Year 11s also benefitted from the demonstrations as they prepared for their GCSE exam.

Year 10s have been studying favellas in Brazil and communities in extreme poverty who have no choice but to build houses from whatever materials they can find. A favella is a slum area which is located on the outskirts of large cities, and they develop when squatters take over vacant land and construct shanties style buildings. There are many favellas in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. To understand the challenges locals face, students were challenged to build settlements from scrap materials like cardboard, plastic and string. This topic is part of the GCSE curriculum to study urban issues and challenges around the world.