Parents & Careers

This video will give you a feel for what Geography is like in Lurgan College.

Why study Geography?

What we're about

Geography is all around us: from the Haiti earthquake, to the Icelandic ash cloud; from the challenge to ‘Make Poverty History’, to the threat of global warming; from immigration into Northern Ireland, to the risk of a global swine flu pandemic. The GCSE Geography course gives you opportunities to increase your knowledge and understanding of many key aspects of life in this ever-changing, exciting and challenging 21st Century world. It helps you to learn about and develop opinions on local issues as well as issues of global concern, equipping you to be better informed citizens of the world in which you live. 

Skills for life and work

In addition to learning about the world, you will be given an opportunity to use and develop a wide range of useful skills for life. These include:

·        Communication –  you will get opportunities to develop your skills of writing in prose; you'll get to investigate written resources and you'll have the chance to talk and listen to others in a variety of settings including group work and role play. You'll be able to work on your negotiating skills as you argue for your opinion on the issues we discuss during the course.

·        Using number– we get bombarded every day with facts and figures thrown at us from every direction, as people try to persuade and convince us through their statistics. In the Geography class, you will be able improve skills at critically assessing data, spotting trends and patterns in tables, graphs and maps.

·        Using ICT– you'll get plenty of opportunities to use ICT creatively during the course. As well as things like Word, Powerpoint and Excel, we make wide ranging creative use of ICT. You will get to write and record your own video on earthquakes; you'll take virtual fieldtrips using Google Earth; you'll produce their own dynamic ICT maps using the Geographic Information Systems we use at GCSE. We can only give you a flavour here of the many ICT skills you be introduced to during your course.

·        Other skills are incorporated too – given the up to date nature of Geography, you will be dealing with many contemporary issues, where you'll get a chance to solve problems and make decisions, all in the context of working with others - vital skills for life both in and beyond school.

These wide and varied skills not only make the study of Geography interesting, but they will stand you in very good stead as they move on in both their education and the rest of their life.

 Geography is about the real world, and so fieldwork plays an important role at both GCSE and A level. It provides the pupils with a valuable and enjoyable opportunity to explore parts of our country and apply the theory learnt in the classroom to the real world around them. At GCSE, we take a trip to the Colin River in Belfast, where we’ll follow the course of a river as it moves downstream, observing the changes in its features as it does. At AS, we get to spend the day at the beach, where we investigate plant succession on Portstewart Strand. At A2, our fieldtrip takes us to the Titanic Quarter of Belfast, where we get to take a tour round the palce where the Titanic was designed and built, as well as visiting some of the Peace Walls as part of our study of Ethnic Diversity. 

"The stereotypical image of a geographer dressed in a fleecy anorak and corduroy trousers, map reading and memorising capital cities is a far cry from the reality of modern geographers. Although knowledge of space and place are key elements of geographical learning, today you are more likely to discover geographers using sophisticated computerised mapping techniques, analysing data for deciding how best to distribute aid in Afghanistan or monitoring the impact that a change in land use has on an endangered species."

Tina Gardner, Communications Officer, Royal Geographical Society