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Planning a geography course

Relevant and engaging geography programmes meet the needs of learners, connect to their interests, and reflect current thinking in geography and the direction set in The New Zealand Curriculum.

Natural environments | Cultural environments

Teachers can design flexible programmes that use challenging contexts in which to develop the student’s understanding of geographic concepts.

Consider these points when designing new programmes:

  • What new ideas and contexts will engage your students and spark their inquiry?
  • What do students enjoy doing in their local environment? What do they want to learn and discover through purposeful study of geography?
  • How can you develop a course that provides for learner choice as well as teacher choice?
  • What are the “must-haves” subject-wise?
  • What contexts could you use from your local environment that students would find engaging? For example, if you are living in an earthquake prone area, or living close to the coast, how will your geography programme reflect your location?

The following programme connects geography achievement objectives to a teaching and learning programme.

Natural environments

Level 6

Achievement objectives

  • Understand that natural and cultural environments have particular characteristics and how environments are shaped by processes that create spatial patterns.
  • Understand how people interact with natural and cultural environments and that this interaction has consequences.

Teaching and learning outline

  • Characteristics and features of a natural landscape with a focus on weather and climate. Where these features become extreme an intense natural event is the consequence. This could be flooding in Manawatu or Pakistan/India.

Level 7

Achievement objectives

  • Understand how the processes that shape natural and cultural environments change over time, vary in scale and from place to place, and create spatial patterns.
  • Understand how people’s perceptions of and interactions with natural and cultural environments differ and have changed over time.

Teaching and learning outline

  • How processes have shaped tropical rainforest environments and how our perceptions of them have changed over time. Examples could come from parts of Asia and the impact of logging.

Level 8

Achievement objectives

  • Understand how interacting processes shape natural and cultural environments, occur at different rates and on different scales, and create spatial variations.
  • Understand how people’s diverse values and perceptions influence the environmental, social, and economic decisions and responses that they make.

Teaching and learning outline

  • How interacting processes occur at different rates and scales, and create spatial variations for example at Muriwai Beach.

Cultural environments

Level 6

Achievement objectives

  • Understand that natural and cultural environments have particular characteristics and how environments are shaped by processes that create spatial patterns.
  • Understand how people interact with natural and cultural environments and that this interaction has consequences.

Teaching and learning outline

  • Migration and its effect on population diversity and how it brings about change over time.
  • The context could be refugee movements to New Zealand; Middle Eastern and North African migration to Europe; and Hispanic migration to the USA.

Level 7

Achievement objectives

  • Understand how the processes that shape natural and cultural environments change over time, vary in scale and from place to place, and create spatial patterns.
  • Understand how people’s perceptions of and interactions with natural and cultural environments differ and have changed over time.

Teaching and learning outline

  • Global study of deprivation with case studies of two contrasting regions.
  • On a local scale a study of deprivation patterns in Auckland.

Level 8

Achievement objectives

  • Understand how interacting processes shape natural and cultural environments, occur at different rates and on different scales, and create spatial variations.
  • Understand how people’s diverse values and perceptions influence the environmental, social, and economic decisions and responses that they make.

Teaching and learning outline

  • How tourism development has shaped and influenced the natural and cultural environments of Bali and Queenstown.

Last updated November 25, 2010



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