Urban Issues Homework Booklet (Rio & London)

This homework booklet covers the whole of Urban Issues and Challenges in twelve structured weeks, built around two fully worked city case studies — Rio de Janeiro (an NEE city) and London (a UK city) — with every figure sourced, dated, and independently fact-checked before publication.

Written for Year 10 to be set alongside the first teaching of the topic (it works equally well as a pre-reading pack if you teach the case studies before setting the homework, or as a structured revision resource in Year 11).

What’s Covered
Urban growth, megacities, and the causes of urbanisation worldwide; Rio de Janeiro as an NEE case study (location and importance, causes of growth, opportunities, challenges, and urban planning through Favela-Bairro); the UK’s population and the pull of London; London as a case study (migration and the changing character of the city, opportunities and challenges, and regeneration through the Olympic Park/Stratford); and sustainable urban living and transport, including BedZED.

Structure
Each of the twelve weeks follows the same five-step rhythm (about 45 minutes total): a short vocabulary task, a chunked information box to read twice, short “check it” comprehension questions, one “think deeper” extended-response task, and a timed exam-style question (weeks 1 and 12 substitute a research task, with a fully creditable printed alternative for students without internet access). This consistency means pupils and parents know exactly what a week involves after the first one, and you never have to explain the format twice.

Differentiation and Scaffolding
The exam-question scaffolding is deliberately withdrawn as the twelve weeks progress — full paragraph plans in weeks 2–5, the shape of the answer only in weeks 6–10, no scaffold at all by week 11 — so the same booklet stretches from first attempt to independent exam technique without you having to write a second version. Answer space matches question demand throughout (extended lines for extended answers), and two-mark “explain” questions are deliberately given more space than two-mark “state” questions.

Retrieval and Independent Practice
A self-assessment RAG tracker lets pupils rate their own confidence topic by topic across the whole 12 weeks, a support section at the back holds a 28-term glossary (with a pronunciation column), a 24-entry number bank of the key statistics, and four gap-fill passages for lower-stress recall practice, plus a bank of sentence starters for the extended-writing questions.

Skills Assessed
Knowledge recall, data interpretation (including a real, sourced statistics table), extended writing and evaluation, and exam technique under timed conditions.

This includes a print ready PDF student booklet and Teacher answer pack.