Junior Cycle Geography certainly broadens your knowledge of the world and is very different to what you did in primary school. The course is varied, ranging from economic activity, volcanoes and earthquakes to urban sprawl and map-work. There is something in it for everyone.

Back in my school days, I really enjoyed studying geography because there were always new things to learn. Unlike other subjects, geography surrounds us every day so understanding it is not just useful for the exam. In this guide, I’ll attempt to share with you all the secrets to the world of geography and the Junior Cycle Geography exam.

Let's have a closer look at some of the elements in the Junior Cycle Geography course:

In Junior Cycle Geography, there is continuous assessment in the form of 2 Classroom-Based Assessments (CBAs):

These are small projects that are based on the geography course that you and your teachers will work on together. By putting time into the CBAs and making sure you understand them, you’ll develop knowledge, skills and values that will help prepare you for the final written exam. 

The results of these CBAs will help form your Junior Cycle Profile of Achievement (JCPA). For each CBA, you will be awarded one of the following descriptors:

After your CBAs are finished, you do the Assessment Task. This is a written task which you complete during class time and it is worth 10% of your overall Junior Cycle Geography grade. This will be sent to the State Examinations Commission for correction.

The Assessment Task will not only assess your knowledge of geography but also the skills that you have gained in the process of completing CBA 2 (My Geography).

This is a 2-hour written exam that you will sit in June of 3rd Year. The final exam is worth a total of 90% (360 marks) of your overall grade and has a total of 10 questions (you must answer them all). Each question is broken up into parts that examine different parts of the geography course and the paper is usually structured in this way:

It is worth noting that the questions do not all carry equal marks. Each question contains a mixture of short answer questions and paragraph-style questions in which you must give more detailed insight, displaying your knowledge of a specific topic (more on this later).

This question style is usually multiple choice where you might cross out a wrong answer, circle the correct answer, fill in the blanks or write a short sentence. If you know your stuff, each of these should take less than a minute to answer, with the exception of the map questions of course, which you should look at more carefully to find what you’re looking for.

The short questions test you on all areas of the course so it's important to know some information about every topic to do well. Here's some further information and advice on this section:

These questions test your skills in geography. They examine your ability to read maps and aerial photographs, as well as your ability to read and interpret graphs and tables. Your ability to read weather maps and charts can also be examined here. The more practice you have with reading maps, drawing maps, chart interpretation, etc. the better you will be. Here's some further information and advice on this section:

With these questions, you are expected to go into more detail and show off your knowledge and understanding of a certain topic. Unlike other subjects, the long questions aren’t set to one topic; they could contain three, seemingly completely unrelated topics such as ocean currents, irrigation and desertification, all linked under one theme.

Since these questions could contain multiple, unrelated topics, I suggest reading through the questions carefully before taking the plunge. Here's some further information and advice on this section:

It's important to know your action verbs and what exactly the questions are asking you. The learning outcomes are the basis for the exam questions and each has an action verb that tells you exactly what they want you to do. Take learning outcome 1.1 as an example:

“Describe the formation and global distribution of volcanoes, earthquakes and fold mountains in the context of plate tectonics and structure of the Earth”. 

There are many parts to this and it is up to you to break up the different elements of what they are asking you to do. Below are some common action verbs: