Teacher guide

Edexcel GCSE Geography A revision

These activities are mapped to Edexcel GCSE Geography A 1GA0, the Geographical Themes route, and not to Geography B. There are 38 of them across the nine areas of the specification, and they are marked as the student works. Geography is unusual in how much of it cannot be pre-made. Fieldwork is examined on the student's own enquiry, so nobody can revise it for them, and UK Challenges is assessed from unseen resources. What can be built in advance is the knowledge those components draw on, plus the skill of getting information out of a source: 25 of the 38 activities ask a student to mark up a map, a photograph or a data extract rather than answer from memory alone.

This page lists what we actually have for Edexcel GCSE Geography A 1GA0, the Geographical Themes route. It is built from the live activities, so it is accurate on the day you read it.

What can be revised in advance, and what cannot

Geography deserves a straight answer about this before a list of links, because two of its three components resist pre-made revision entirely.

Fieldwork cannot be revised by anyone but you and your students. Both enquiries, one physical and one human, are examined on the work your students actually did: their data, their location, their decisions about sampling. An activity written by us cannot know any of that. What generalises is the method, so that is what we build: how a sampling strategy is chosen, how data is presented, how reliability is argued about.

UK Challenges is examined from unseen resources, with no pre-release material. There is nothing to rehearse. The preparation that works is the content from the rest of the course plus practice at reading a source cold.

Everything else, which is most of the specification, revises normally.

What we have, area by area

Thirty-eight live activities across the nine areas: seven on the changing landscapes of the UK, six on resource management, five on ecosystems and biodiversity, four each on weather hazards and on UK Challenges, four on the physical fieldwork enquiry, three each on changing cities and global development, and two on the human enquiry.

The lean toward physical geography is real and worth planning around. If you teach the human units first, there is less here for you at the moment than there will be.

Source work is the majority, on purpose

Twenty-five of the thirty-eight activities ask the student to mark up something: a map, a photograph, a graph or a data extract. That is the highest proportion of source work on this site, and it follows the specification rather than a preference of ours.

It also makes these activities behave differently from a recall quiz. A student cannot answer by recognising a right-looking option, because there are no options: they have to find the thing in the source. That is the skill both written papers keep asking for.

Finding the right one

The lists below are grouped by classroom use, worked out from what each activity contains. Homework is not a heading, because all thirty-eight suit it and a heading holding everything narrows nothing.

The three activities embedded below are playable here without an account.

Using them

For a short cycle with a recheck built in, revision intervention a department can sustain has the shape. For off-screen options to pair with these, including exam question triage, see ready-to-run revision activities. To put several in front of one class in order, build a sprint.

Our past paper archive carries Edexcel's own Geography A papers and mark schemes, free and unaltered. For source-based questions they are the better practice, because the resources are real ones.

What this page does not do

It does not revise your fieldwork, and it does not pretend to.

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

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

Every live Geography A activity for Edexcel

38 activities, all mapped to Edexcel/Pearson GCSE Geography A (1GA0).

Good for intervention (27)

Good for independent study (20)

The UK Geology Map 13 min
Biome Distribution Lab 15 min
Rainforest Nutrient Cycle 15 min
Resource Classification 15 min
Resource Patterns Lab 15 min
Woodland Nutrient Cycle 15 min
Coastal Processes Lab 16 min
Rainforest Deforestation Response 16 min

Good for mock preparation (13)

Good for starter (6)

Good for cover lesson (1)

The Energy Mix Lab 20 min

Good for tutor time (1)

The UK Geology Map 13 min

See all 38, by topic

Try it with your class

Edexcel Geography A 13 minutes

The UK Geology Map

10 steps, 6 interactive, 7 activity types.

Best used for

Starter Tutor time Intervention

Starter: Short enough to open a lesson and still leave time to teach.
Tutor time: Fits a short tutor slot without being cut in half.
Intervention: Mostly questions, so it finds the gap quickly.

Try one question

Which rocks tend to form the UK's rugged UPLANDS in the north and west?

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Edexcel Geography A 15 minutes

Biome Distribution Lab

12 steps, 8 interactive, 9 activity types.

Best used for

Starter Independent study Mock preparation

Starter: Short enough to open a lesson and still leave time to teach.
Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.

Try one question

A biome is hot and wet all year round and lies on the equator. Which biome is it?

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Edexcel Geography A 15 minutes

Rainforest Nutrient Cycle

12 steps, 8 interactive, 9 activity types.

Best used for

Starter Independent study Mock preparation

Starter: Short enough to open a lesson and still leave time to teach.
Independent study: Explains before it asks, so a student can work alone.
Mock preparation: Asks students to build an answer, not just recognise one.

Try one question

In a tropical rainforest, which nutrient store is the largest?

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Common questions

Is this Geography A or Geography B?

A, the Geographical Themes route, specification 1GA0. Geography B is a different specification with different topics and four fieldwork enquiries rather than two, so content is not interchangeable between them. Each activity names the specification it belongs to on its own page.

Can you revise the fieldwork for me?

No, and nobody can. Fieldwork is examined on the enquiry your students actually did, including their own data and their own location, so the questions depend on work we have never seen. What we can help with is the method underneath it: sampling, presentation and the reasoning about reliability.

What about UK Challenges?

It is assessed from unseen resources with no pre-release, so there is nothing to rehearse in advance. The useful preparation is the underlying content from the rest of the course, plus practice at reading an unfamiliar source, which is what most of these activities are.

Do the activities cover map and source skills?

Yes, and they are the majority. Twenty-five of the 38 ask the student to mark up a map, a photograph or a data extract. That is a higher proportion than any other subject we cover, because it is what this specification assesses.

Are case studies included?

Only where the specification names the content itself. Where a case study is your department's choice, the activity covers the process and the concepts rather than pretending to know which example you teach.

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.

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Related for teachers

GCSE revision intervention a department can sustain A workable shape for revision intervention: find the gap, work on one narrow thing, check whether it moved, repeat. Built around what a small department can keep up for a term, and clear about what this site can't tell you.
Ready-to-run GCSE revision activities A working list of GCSE revision activities, each with the thing it makes students recall, the moment they find out whether they were right, and what they do about it. Some run on a screen and some need nothing but a board.