The Geography courses followed deal with the important aspects of modern Geography. It concerns our human endeavour to make the most effective use of world resources and to live in harmony with the environment. All students at Key Stage 3 follow the Northern Ireland Curriculum, students at GCSE level follow OCR Syllabus C while students at AS/A2 level follow the CCEA courses.

A great emphasis is placed on using a wide variety of teaching methods and strategies. All students undertake fieldwork, either within the extensive school grounds or further afield. Where possible small fieldwork and observation exercises have been built into Programmes of Study. Year 13 students attend a residential fieldwork. There is a strong emphasis on practical work, including map analysis, satellite imagery and the use of ICT. The Department encourages positive achievement through a reward system.
Over the last few years the Geography Department has been actively involved in the Young Environmentalist of the Year Competition sponsored by Eco-Unesco and ENFO.In 2004 a group of Year 8 students achived the title of Supreme winners in the Junior category of the awards for their study of bird life and habits within the school grounds. They built and erected a series of nest boxes and into one they fitted a miniature camera. In Spring 2005 a pair of blue tits nested and reared their young in this nest box. Pupils and staff were able to watch "live" progress of activity in the box.
In 2005, the topic for the competition was energy use within the school and again the pupils achieved great success, winning their category. As part of the project the students measured levels of energy waste as a result of classroom overheating and computer equipment being left on standby. They successfully carried out an awareness raising campaign, placed reminder labels on computers and in Technology class they designed and manufactured a piece of electronic equipment that detected if overheat was taking place in a classroom. In May 2005, the winning team travelled to Dublin to collect their prizes of MP3 players.

We use a range of assessment methods to match the wide variety of teaching styles and materials. Most units of work include conventional examinations in their assessment, but this is often combined with an element of continuous assessment which can take the form of projects, extended pieces of work and fieldwork reports.

Geography Links of Interest

Geography Work Sheets