Planning matters

Whether it be for the short, medium or long term, the planning stage is a crucial ingredient in enabling pupils to maximise their learning in geography. With greater flexibility now present in delivering the national curriculum, effective planning also enables you to incorporate new, innovative ideas into your teaching.

For any curriculum plan, consider the following:

• do your plans account for pupils' prior experiences in geography?
• do you build in an expectation of progress in terms of depth, range, scale, and complexity of study?
• do you provide opportunities for a wide range of teaching and learning experiences, including fieldwork?
• do you make the most of geography's contribution to the wider curriculum in your plans?
• Is there flexibility in your schemes of work to draw on topical events and issues to make the geography curriculum meaningful and relevant to pupils?
• do you take account of continuity and progression, within and between phase for all learners?

For more detail on short-, medium- and long-term planning, and for practical examples to be used in specific key stages, choose from the menu.

The QCA/DfES Scheme of Work provides further guidance, with examples, on short-, medium- and long-term planning.