Curriculum making is an important part of any teacher's professional identity: engaging with the discipline, and developing pedagogical practice, while considering the particular nature of the school's context and the young people who sit in front of you to ensure their geographical experiences are not only educational, but also authentic and empowering.
According to Professor David Lambert
"Curriculum making is the creative act of interpreting a curriculum specification and turning it into a coherent, challenging, engaging and enjoyable scheme of work, it is a job that really never ends and lies at the heart of good teaching."
For Primary practitioners and Secondary alike, developing a curriculum across a key stage is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which may result in several iterations over time. There are a lot of decisions to make in this work, and not all colleagues may have the time to do this within a particular academic year's cycle, or have opportunities to undertake the necessary reading and other preparation to be able to do this work justice.
For this reason, some teachers will turn to ready-made resources and schemes which are provided by a range of organisations. These are probably well known to many teachers, but Pearson have now stepped into this arena with an offering of their own.
These resources are part of the Pearson Primary Extended Curriculum.
Pearson has spent a year working with staff at Reach Academy Feltham, Jon Hutchinson (Director of Training and Development at the Reach Foundation) and Emily Maule (Director of Humanities and Social Sciences at Reach Academy Feltham) to create a new, whole-school curriculum for Primary History and Geography.
You can take a look at the sample materials and find out more here if this sounds like it might be something to kick start or revitalise the geography in your school.
The resource is provided as a complete curriculum, including what Pearson calls “I know that...” and “I know how...” approaches, which "enable pupils to not only show they know and remember more, but also develop the conceptual and disciplinary knowledge they need to become young geographers."
Pearson's website explains that the new resources adopt a: "pedagogically rigorous approach, validated by the hundreds of classrooms who have clarified their intent, been supported through their implementation and seen evident impact."
This approach has been trialled in a number of schools across the Reach Foundation before being made available more widely. This has doubtless ironed out many of the problems that are spotted when a new activity is given its first run through in an actual classroom with children.
For each Unit, teachers can access planning materials and lesson plans, resources, printable activity booklets and assessments which can be completed in various ways. The Units are split up into 6 Sessions, with each one ending in a Unit Check Out, which forms a final review check or assessment. There are 3 Units for each Year, suggesting that combining them with 3 History topics would produce a year's worth of lessons. Resources can be located quickly using the search function.
A series of free sample lessons are provided - you can take a good look at a KS1 lesson on the UK, and a KS2 lesson on Rivers to see whether this might fit with your own existing curriculum, or take it a step further.
Sample lesson plans to accompany the resources can also be seen on the link above.
I've had a good look through the resources and supporting documents for geography.
There are some familiar topics which receive a fresh look, along with some interesting new areas of study - Year 6 will explore fast fashion, for example, alongside carrying out fieldwork. Year 4, for example includes Rivers (with a focus on the Volga), Migration (including a look at Windrush) and Natural Resources (with a located example of Chile and its copper mines).
In addition to the lesson materials there are Concept toolkits, which allow for the exploration of some of the key underpinning concepts of the Units. These concepts include Change and Location and Place. The materials here introduce strategies to organise class discussions, group work and decision making.
There is plenty of support for writing, such as the inclusion of structure strips for some of the key topics when extended writing is required, which are formatted ready for printing.
Speaking of printing, there is likely to be a lot of printing required to disseminate the very thorough, but lengthy booklets for both pupils and teachers which accompany each Unit. The Year 4 Pupil booklet on the Migration Unit is 31 pages long, for example. Schools would need to factor in a photocopying budget. The booklets are provided in PDF format.
Each pupil booklet starts with a knowledge organiser (you may have your own views on those), and a learning review page to track progress through the Unit. Activities include labelling, cloze text passages, connecting boxes and sorting information as well as writing answers - generally quite short pieces of text, or capturing ideas. The accompanying Teacher booklets will give teachers confidence in what is required, and help pupils through each Session. Pacing is likely to be important here, and the amount of text and visuals may overwhelm some learners.
There is one problematic Unit entitled Slums, which I would not personally use given the language, and could usefully be rebranded as 'Homes: Near and Far', or something similar.
There are differing opinions about the use of the term 'slums' and I understand that Pearson did speak to subject experts and teachers before making the decision to use it. However, they are now consulting with teachers who have bought these resources and will use their feedback to decide whether to update the unit to avoid the term. One possible omission from the resource is any multimedia material - such as videos which are aimed at use by pupils or teachers - the materials are quite 'static' and a few animations or sound clips with effects would have been helpful for a Primary audience.
There are some videos included, but these are restricted to teacher briefings for each unit from the project's lead: Jon Hutchinson.
In the video below, for example, he talks about the approach that has been taken and the work that has been done so far, which may sound like something that you would find develops your current practice. If so, it would be worth taking out a trial subscription.
This approach will not be for everyone, but given the nature of the profession, as we reset after COVID19 and face other challenges with recruitment and recent financial crises, support of this kind will be welcomed by many.
The Cambridge Primary Review is also a little cautious of the approach taken by some schools and Trusts, suggesting that "children will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected merely to do as they are told."
It is the consistency of approach, format of materials and connection with cognitive science that will provide the appeal for many Primary colleagues.
There will likely be different approaches to using the resources which will probably include adapting them or including a few additional resources such as videos or music.
You can request a FREE TRIAL, and this may be a useful first step to see whether the resources are going to be the answer to your current problems, or a support for colleagues.
Trials run for one month - International schools have two months.
The price to access the Primary Geography content is £400-£450 a year. The current increases in energy and staffing costs mean this will require a careful investment decision. Subscription to the content provides school access to the online content for 12 full months from the date of registration. Teachers accessing the resources via a subscription of this kind must of course be from the same school and use their school email addresses.
For those who want to pair up the Geography content with the History content, the price is £800 for the year for both.
I've also taken a look at the Primary History content, and the structure and focus for each unit is consistent with the Geography content, to provide a consistent experience across the Humanities in schools that go for that option, particularly where teachers may not be subject specialists.
There are also supporting Professional Development courses available through to May 2024, led by John Hutchinson for those who want an additional level of support in finding out how to use the resources to the greatest advantage.
To read more, click this link to download an illustrated booklet (PDF)
Thanks to KS2 colleagues at King's Ely Junior for their comments on these resources which helped to produce this post.
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