ST LAWRENCE COLLEGE
Grade 7 Geography Syllabus 2011-12
UNIT 1 -Introduction to Geography
Planet Earth, your home
Voc: gravity, atmosphere, air
The changing planet
Voc: weathering, fossil fuel, global warming
Your place on the planet
The three types of Geography
Voc : Physical Geography, Human Geography and Environmental Geography
UNIT 2 - Making and mapping connections
Local, national and international connections
Plans and scale
Mental map
Real map
4 and 6 figure grid references
Distances as the crow flies and by road
Directions
Ordnance Survey maps
Height of land
Voc : contour lines , spot heights
UNIT 3 – Settlement
Early settlements and factors to consider when choosing a site
Voc: settlement, site
Patterns of rural settlements
Voc: dispersed, linear and nucleated
Model of an urban area
Voc: Central Business District, inner city, inner suburbs, outer suburbs, industrial zone
Settlement functions
Voc: function
Landuse in urban areas using an OS map
Benefits and problems of living in a city eg Athens
Housing developments on brownfield and greenfield sites
Voc: greenfield sites, brownfield sites
Sustainable development in the urban environment
Voc: economic sustainability, social sustainability, environmental sustainability
MAPWORK – Settlements of Greece
UNIT 4 – Shopping
Types of goods and their sphere of influence
Voc – convenience/low order goods, comparison/high order goods, sphere of influence
FIELDWORK – A comparison of the landuse, pedestrians and traffic at Vari and Glyfada
UNIT 5 – Rivers
The water cycle and how the rain reaches the river
Voc: water cycle, precipitation, evaporation, infiltration, surface runoff, throughflow, permeable,
impermeable, groundwater
A river on its journey - the parts of the river
Voc: source, tributaries, confluence, watershed, floodplain, drainage basin, mouth, channel, bank, bed
Rivers at work
Voc: erosion, transportation, deposition, abrasion, attrition, hydraulic pressure, solution, bedload,
suspension, traction, load, sediment
Landforms created by the river- v shaped valleys, waterfalls, meanders and oxbow lakes
Voc: plunge pool, gorge
How we use and abuse rivers
UNIT 6 - Floods
What causes floods – factors that contribute to flooding
Causes of flooding in Tewkesbury, UK 2007
Who helps in a flooding crisis
The effects of flooding in the UK 2007
Voc: Infrastructure
Protection from flooding
UNIT 7 – The Restless Earth
The structure of the earth
Voc: crust, mantle, core, oceanic crust, continental crust, lithosphere, trenches
The Earths main volcanoes and earthquakes near plate boundaries
Voc: earthquake, volcano, plates, convection currents
The 4 plate boundaries/margins
Voc: magma, conservative plate boundary, destructive plate boundary, fold mountains, collision plate
boundary, conservative plate margin
Earthquakes
Voc: focus, epicenter, aftershocks, magnitude, Richter scale
Earthquake in Pakistan
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami
Volcanoes
Voc: pyroclastic flow, mudflow, crater
Volcano in Montserrat
Voc: island arc
Coping with hazards