Geography: The DDP Framework

Curriculum Outline: The DDP Framework

Explore our neuro-affirming Geography curriculum structured across three developmental stages, from GCSE Paper 1 to the A-level independent investigation.

GCSE Year 1 • Awakening • Paper 1: Living with the physical environment

This initial phase builds the physical geography that everything else rests on: hazards, ecosystems and the UK's coasts and rivers. Learners meet the knowledge-card system, the because-chain and the enquiry cycle for the first time, and complete their first fieldwork enquiry in a planned, predictable environment.

Hazards and Climate

Natural Hazards, Climate Change and the Living World

AQA 8035 Alignment: Paper 1 Sections A and B

Tectonic and weather hazards are taught as systems with inputs, processes and outputs, drawn live as colour-coded diagrams before any text is read. Climate change is introduced through the evidence and the communicators: climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe's work on talking about climate across belief divides, and Greta Thunberg's account of autism as the reason she could not look away from the data. Ecosystems, rainforests and hot deserts follow the same card-first pattern.

Key Delivery Targets:

Every hazard case study on a six-field knowledge card: where, when, cause, primary effects, secondary effects, responses.
Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement in Kenya as the anchor example for ecosystem management and community-led restoration.
Sensory Self-Recognition (Emotional Literacy Touchpoint): learners identify which classroom conditions help them hold a process diagram in mind, and record this in their DDP.

Physical Landscapes

UK Coasts, Rivers and the First Fieldwork Enquiry

AQA 8035 Alignment: Paper 1 Section C, Paper 3 Section B

Coastal and river processes are taught as landform stories: a wave or a river does a small number of things, repeatedly, and the landscape is the record. Marie Tharp's mapping of the ocean floor, done from data she was not allowed to collect at sea, introduces the idea that careful measurement changes what we can see. The physical fieldwork enquiry takes place in the summer term using the sensory protocol in the Humanities Fieldwork Guide.

Key Delivery Targets:

Process diagrams drawn live and issued clean, so nobody copies and listens at the same time.
Fieldwork site visited by staff first; roles, templates and a quiet option fixed before the day.
Enquiry write-up completed through the six-stage template, which becomes the Paper 3 revision document.

GCSE Year 2 • Change • Papers 2 and 3

The second phase turns to human geography: cities, development and resources, and then to the geographical applications paper with its pre-release booklet. The human fieldwork enquiry takes place in the UK city studied, and the year ends with the GCSE examinations under the access arrangements that have been the learner's normal way of working from the start.

Urban and Economic

Urban Issues, the Changing Economic World and Food

AQA 8035 Alignment: Paper 2 Sections A, B and C (Food option)

Cities are taught map-first: every named example is a location on a sketch map before it is a paragraph. Urban inequality and regeneration are read through the work of Majora Carter, whose environmental-justice projects in the South Bronx show how a community reshapes its own geography, and through geographer Doreen Massey's argument that a place is made by the connections running through it. Food security draws on Vandana Shiva's writing on seed sovereignty and small-scale farming alongside large-scale strategies.

Key Delivery Targets:

The human fieldwork enquiry takes place in the UK city case study so that classroom knowledge and lived data are the same place.
Development indicators taught as one fixed comparison table reused for every country example.
Voice and Place (Emotional Literacy Touchpoint): learners map their own connections to the local area and compare them with a peer's, practising the idea that the same place is experienced differently.

Applications

Pre-Release Issue Evaluation and Examination Readiness

AQA 8035 Alignment: Paper 3 Sections A and B

The pre-release resource booklet arrives twelve weeks before the exam and is the most predictable assessment moment in the qualification. It is annotated collaboratively over four weeks with a colour key, the decision-making frame is rehearsed on a previous year's booklet first, and both fieldwork enquiries are revisited so that Paper 3 Section B is answered from a document the learner wrote themselves.

Key Delivery Targets:

Knowledge cards withdrawn one section at a time in the final term, with immediate return if recall drops.
Exam-day plan agreed per learner: arrival time, room, arrangements, regulation strategy.
Timed practice introduced last, on short questions first, never on a 9-mark answer the learner has not already built from a plan grid.

A-level Years 1 and 2 • Embrace • AQA 7037 Components 1 to 3

At A-level the learner's own question drives a fifth of the marks. The systems thinking, card format and essay architecture from GCSE are upgraded rather than replaced, and the independent investigation is chunked into stage gates so that an open task with a distant deadline becomes a sequence of bounded ones.

Systems and Places

Water, Carbon, Coasts, Hazards and Changing Places

AQA 7037 Alignment: Component 1 Sections A to C, Component 2 Sections A to C

Every physical unit reuses one systems template: inputs, stores, flows, outputs. Carbon and ocean systems are read alongside marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's work on ocean policy and climate solutions. Changing Places is built on the learner's own area and on Doreen Massey's Kilburn High Road essay, which gives a rigorous way to say that a place is where global flows meet. Contemporary urban environments return to Majora Carter and to the city studied at GCSE.

Key Delivery Targets:

GCSE hazard and coast cards upgraded with a risk-and-vulnerability field, not rewritten from scratch.
The 20-mark essay assembled from a plan grid across three lessons before it is ever attempted under time.
Coastal fieldwork days one and two in the spring of Year 1, tied to Component 1 Section B.

Independent Investigation

The NEA: A Question the Learner Chooses

AQA 7037 Alignment: Component 3, 3,000 to 4,000 words, 20%

The investigation is where deep interest becomes marks. The question is formed through a four-step funnel with the teacher present, fieldwork days three and four collect the learner's own data, and the write-up is divided into sections with a word budget and a date each. A learner who finishes a section early moves on; a learner who is behind has the plan adjusted with them, never by removing sections.

Key Delivery Targets:

No learner leaves for the summer of Year 1 without an approved title and method plan.
Speech-to-text permitted for first drafts; reading log kept in a fixed four-field format.
Ownership (Emotional Literacy Touchpoint): the investigation is framed as the learner's own piece of geography, and it is returned to them after moderation.

2. Geography Assessment Matrix: Exam Board to DDP Methods

Realigning AQA's four assessment objectives to reduce case-study overload, blank-page anxiety on extended answers, data-reading panic and fieldwork uncertainty.

Objective AO1

Know Places, Processes and Environments

Traditional Barrier: Learners are asked to hold dozens of named examples, dates and figures in memory, and are marked down for the gaps rather than credited for the structure they do have.

DDP Strategy — Knowledge on Cards:

Every case study lives on a six-field card that stays on the desk in every lesson and every internal assessment until the mock cycle. Recall is trained on a spaced schedule; it is never the entry ticket to the lesson.

Target Area: Case Studies / Located Examples

Objective AO2

Understand Concepts and Processes

Traditional Barrier: Processes are explained in dense paragraphs; learners who think visually are asked to reconstruct a system from prose while also listening.

DDP Strategy — Diagram First, Because-Chain Second:

Every process is a labelled diagram drawn live and issued clean, then narrated as a because-chain: this happens because that happens. Learners explain the diagram aloud before they write about it.

Target Area: Physical and Human Processes

Objective AO3

Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Judge

Traditional Barrier: 9-mark and 20-mark questions present a blank page and a clock; the judgement move is expected but rarely taught as a structure.

DDP Strategy — Command-Word Frames and Plan Grids:

Each command word has a fixed colour, a fixed frame and a fixed number of moves. Extended answers are assembled from a three-column plan grid (for, against, judgement), and the judgement is a taught sentence: "Overall, the most significant factor is X because Y, although Z."

Target Area: Extended Writing / Issue Evaluation

Objective AO4

Use Skills to Investigate and Communicate

Traditional Barrier: Map, graph and statistical skills are taught in one block and then assumed; fieldwork is an unbounded day out with unclear roles and no exit.

DDP Strategy — Skills Drills and Sensory-Planned Fieldwork:

Data skills run as short drills in every unit, then are applied in fieldwork and the NEA. Fieldwork follows the seven-step sensory protocol: staff reconnaissance, pre-visit, fixed roles, pre-printed templates, quiet option, printed timings, same-day debrief.

Target Area: Fieldwork / Data Skills / NEA

3. Dynamic Geography Playgrounds

Explore interactive models designed to translate the enquiry cycle, case-study load and essay architecture into clear systems a learner can see.

The Enquiry Loop

Trace how a fieldwork question moves from planning to evaluation. AQA can ask about any stage in Paper 3 Section B.

Enquiry: Active

Stage 1: Question

Forming an Investigable Question

Questions are chosen from a shortlist at GCSE and built through the question funnel at A-level: topic, place, measurable variable, comparison. Nobody starts from a blank page.

Offloading tool: the question funnel sheet

Geographical Literacy Toolbox

4. The Geographical Evidence Sifter

Select a piece of learner writing below, and click the sifter buttons to isolate the geographical claim, the data evidence and the DDP rewrite.

Evidence Parser v1.0

Learner Writing Excerpt Preset: Fieldwork Write-Up

Sieve Extraction Variables Analysis Aligned

Geographical Claim

Data Evidence

DDP Rewrite

Isolating evidence protects the argument. AQA Geography Aligned

5. AQA Specification Map

Where the marks come from at each level, and the option routes this framework teaches. Check timings and mark totals against the current AQA specification each year.

GCSE 8035

Paper	Content and our options	Weight
1 Physical	Natural hazards; the living world; UK landscapes: coasts and rivers. 1h 30m.	35%
2 Human	Urban issues; the changing economic world; resource management: food. 1h 30m.	35%
3 Applications	Issue evaluation from the pre-release booklet; fieldwork from two contrasting enquiries; skills. 1h 15m.	30%

A-level 7037

Component	Content and our options	Weight
1 Physical	Water and carbon cycles (core); coastal systems; hazards. 2h 30m.	40%
2 Human	Global systems and governance (core); changing places (core); contemporary urban environments. 2h 30m.	40%
3 NEA	Independent investigation, 3,000 to 4,000 words, four days' fieldwork minimum across the course.	20%

DDP Personalisation Unit

6. Personalised Geography Access Plan (IEAP) Builder

Toggle knowledge-card support, command-word frames, fieldwork protocol and access arrangements below to construct a standardised British English student access plan ready to copy.

Select Active Plan Parameters

Case-Study Knowledge Cards

Six-field cards for every case study stay on the desk in lessons and internal assessments until the mock cycle; withdrawal is one section at a time and reversible.

Command-Word Frames and Plan Grids

Colour-coded frames for every command word and a three-column plan grid for all 6-mark, 9-mark and 20-mark answers, faded deliberately and reinstated at the first sign of overload.

Fieldwork Sensory Protocol

Site card shared two weeks ahead, fixed role, pre-printed data sheets, named quiet space and adult, printed timings, transport adapted where needed.

Access Arrangements as Normal Way of Working

Extra time, word processor, reader or text-to-speech and rest breaks used in every internal assessment from week one so the JCQ evidence trail is continuous.

NEA Stage Gates and Speech-to-Text

Investigation divided into sections with a word budget and date each; first drafts may be dictated; fortnightly ten-minute check-ins with a fixed agenda.

Dynamic Access Plan

Compiling plan parameters...

Generated in strict compliance with DDP and British English UK spelling standards.

Geography, AQA GCSE & A-level

Neuro-Affirming Geography

Curriculum Outline: The DDP Framework

Natural Hazards, Climate Change and the Living World

UK Coasts, Rivers and the First Fieldwork Enquiry

Urban Issues, the Changing Economic World and Food

Pre-Release Issue Evaluation and Examination Readiness

Water, Carbon, Coasts, Hazards and Changing Places

The NEA: A Question the Learner Chooses

2. Geography Assessment Matrix: Exam Board to DDP Methods

Know Places, Processes and Environments

Understand Concepts and Processes

Apply, Analyse, Evaluate and Judge

Use Skills to Investigate and Communicate

3. Dynamic Geography Playgrounds

The Enquiry Loop

Forming an Investigable Question

Case-Study Load Balancer

The Essay Architect

Answering the Question in One Sentence

4. The Geographical Evidence Sifter

5. AQA Specification Map

6. Personalised Geography Access Plan (IEAP) Builder

Select Active Plan Parameters