Geography lessons offer great scope for developing students’ literacy and numeracy and provide plentiful opportunities for students to develop effective reading, writing and numeracy skills and communicate orally. Promoting literacy and numeracy is seen as a responsibility for all teachers in the National Curriculum.

The Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework  (ITTECF) emphasises that every teacher can improve students’ literacy by explicitly teaching reading, writing and oral language skills. Good literacy and numeracy skills are necessary for geographical study to help students understand geographical concepts, develop their geographical thinking and communicate ideas.

The DfE ITT criteria requires that prior to the award of QTS trainees must demonstrate competence in the following areas:

• ‘Speaking, listening, and communicating are fundamental to a teacher’s role. Teachers should use standard English grammar, clear pronunciation, and vocabulary relevant to the situation to convey instructions, questions, information, concepts, and ideas with clarity. Teachers should read fluently and with good understanding.
• Writing by teachers will be seen by colleagues, pupils, and parents and, as such, it is important that a teacher’s writing reflects the high standards of accuracy their professional role demands. They should write clearly, accurately, legibly, and coherently using correct spelling and punctuation.
• Teachers should use data and graphs to interpret information, identify patterns and trends and draw appropriate conclusions. They need to interpret pupil data and understand statistics and graphs in the news, academic reports, and relevant papers. Teachers should be able to complete mathematical calculations fluently with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages. They should be able to solve mathematical problems using a variety of methods and approaches, including estimating and rounding, sense-checking answers, breaking down problems into simpler steps, and explaining and justifying answers using appropriate language.’

(Initial teacher training (ITT): criteria and supporting advice, DfE 2024)

The trainee teacher is responsible to work to address shortfalls in English and mathematics in addition to other aspects of their training.

Start by looking at these aspects of literacy and numeracy.