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AQA GCSE Geography revision

These activities are mapped to AQA GCSE Geography 8035. Fifty-two of them, twenty to twenty-four minutes each, across all six content topic areas and both sections of Paper 3. **The first thing to check is whether they are about your places.** AQA names the type of case study and lets each department choose the example, so we had to choose too. Our megacity is Rio de Janeiro, our UK city is Bristol, and our LIC or NEE country is Lagos and Nigeria. If your department teaches different ones, three of these fifty-two are about somebody else. Everything else transfers, because processes do. A wave-cut platform forms the same way on any coast and the development gap is measured the same way whichever country you chose.

This page lists what we actually have for AQA GCSE Geography 8035. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.

Whose case studies are these?

AQA's specification does something generous and, for a revision site, awkward. It names the kind of case study a student must know, then lets the department pick the example. A major city in an LIC or NEE. A UK city. An LIC or NEE country. A coastal landscape, a river landscape, a glaciated upland, somewhere in the UK.

A national revision site cannot leave that blank, so we chose. Rio de Janeiro for the megacity. Bristol for the UK city. Lagos and Nigeria for the country. Holderness turns up in the coastal activities, Svalbard in the cold environments, the Amazon in the rainforest ones.

If those match your scheme of work, good. If they do not, be clear with your class about what those particular activities are for: the shape of the answer, not the content of it. A student who can explain why a squatter settlement grows where it does can do that about Mumbai just as well, but they will not walk out of these activities with your statistics.

This does not affect most of the set. Processes, systems and methods make up the large majority of these fifty-two, and they are the same everywhere.

Six activities for the paper everyone skips

Paper 3 is thirty per cent of the qualification and usually the least revised, for a good reason: Section A hangs on a pre-release booklet nobody has seen yet, and Section B asks about fieldwork the student did themselves. Neither looks revisable.

Half of each of them is. Six of these fifty-two activities are built for Paper 3 rather than for content, which is more than any other specification on this site has for its skills paper.

Three are on issue evaluation: what to do with a pre-release resource booklet before the exam, how to weigh evidence that points in two directions, and how to justify a decision rather than merely state it. Three are on fieldwork: the enquiry sequence, sampling methods and what is wrong with each of them, and what a good evaluation of your own investigation actually says.

None of them can supply the data your students collected. All of them rehearse the reasoning that turns that data into marks, and that reasoning is identical whether your enquiry was a river or a high street.

What the content activities are like

The set is heavier on physical geography than human, which follows the specification. Coastal, river and glacial landscapes each have a processes activity and a landform activity, and those are the ones that use our diagram-labelling and annotation interactions rather than a list of questions.

Tectonic hazards is the strongest run: plate boundaries, two contrasting earthquakes with their real effects and responses, and the risk and response reasoning that connects them.

Resource management is covered at the overview level and then through food, water and energy, which mirrors how most departments teach it.

Using them

The three activities embedded further down are playable here without an account, so you can see what a student sees before setting anything.

The lists below group by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains. For how each one is meant to be run, see ready-to-run revision activities. To put several in front of one class in order, build a sprint and share one link. Everything else, by subject and board, is on the revision pages.

If you teach or moved from the other board, Edexcel GCSE Geography A and Edexcel GCSE Geography B describe two very differently assessed courses.

What this page does not do

It does not supply your case studies. Named above, plainly, because finding out after setting homework is worse.

It does not hold your fieldwork data. The enquiry skills are here and the two days in the field are not.

It is not a scheme of work. For a shape to drop these into, see how to structure a GCSE revision programme.

It does not track anything, so there is no completion list to check.

Every live Geography activity for AQA

52 activities, all mapped to AQA GCSE Geography (8035).

See all 52, by topic

Try it with your class

AQA Geography 22 minutes

Plate Boundaries Explorer

15 steps, 10 interactive, 11 activity types.

Best used for
Intervention Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Intervention: Mostly questions, so it finds the gap quickly.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

Where the Nazca plate meets the South American plate, it is always the Nazca plate that sinks. Which answer explains that correctly?

AQA Geography 20 minutes

Justify Your Decision

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

One candidate recommends option A and another recommends option B on the same issue. Both are awarded full marks. Which explains how?

AQA Geography 21 minutes

Megacity Case Study

14 steps, 9 interactive, 10 activity types.

Best used for
Independent study Mock preparation Cover lesson
  • Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
  • Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.
  • Cover lesson: Teaches and tests in one go, so a non-specialist can run it.

Try one question

A city can demolish an informal settlement and rehouse residents elsewhere, or improve it where it stands. Which reasoning best supports upgrading?

Common questions

Which case studies do your activities use?

Rio de Janeiro for the LIC or NEE megacity, Bristol for the UK city, and Lagos and Nigeria for the LIC or NEE country. AQA lets each department pick its own, so if yours teaches Mumbai and Birmingham those three activities are about somewhere else.

Does that make them useless to my class?

Not useless, but not revision either. A student can still learn the shape of a megacity answer from them: push and pull factors, the squatter settlement, the management scheme, the evaluation. They cannot learn your facts from them, and facts are what the exam credits.

Is there anything for Paper 3?

Yes, six activities, which is unusual. Three on issue evaluation, covering how to read a pre-release booklet, how to weigh evidence and how to justify a decision. Three on fieldwork, covering the enquiry process, sampling and evaluating your own investigation.

Can you revise fieldwork if the fieldwork was ours?

Only the half that generalises. The enquiry sequence, the sampling methods and their weaknesses, and what a good evaluation says are the same wherever you went. The data your students collected in their two days is not here and could not be.

How much is there in total?

Fifty-two activities, twenty to twenty-four minutes each, reaching all six content topic areas and both Paper 3 sections.

Will I see who has completed them?

No. Following a shared link records nothing about who followed it, which is a deliberate choice about children's data.

Put one in front of a class

Tell us the subject and how long you have. You get a link to hand out, and it marks itself.

Create a free teacher account

Written by David Wright, Co-Founder, DoRevision.

David builds DoRevision with his son Noah (15). David has spent his career building EdTech products, and Noah has grown up watching lines of code being written. As a student at an important stage of his education, together they are building the revision platform that Noah is using to help revise for his GCSE exams and hopes his friends will find useful too.

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  • Edexcel GCSE Geography A revision Every live Edexcel GCSE Geography A (1GA0) revision activity, mapped to the Geographical Themes specification, with a straight account of which parts of this course can be revised in advance and which cannot.
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