It has been a busy couple of weeks in the Geography department, in amongst all the exams and report writing, we have been enjoying the sunshine in the New Forest and Isle of Purbeck on numerous field trips.
On Wednesday 19th June, it was the turn of Upper 4 to investigate the big outdoors. This time, it was a newly devised fieldwork investigation into tension and conflict along the Old Harry coastline. The group were halted in their tracks straight away as any unexploded bomb was discovered that morning at Knoll Beach, as the site was used as a training ground for World War II. Diverted to Middle Beach, the group completed place narratives on the location affected by sea level rise and coastal erosion there. A walk to Old Harry was the next destination, where the girls considered the coastal processes and landforms found there. Mrs Chapleo expertly explained how the more resistant rocks have created caves, arches and stacks; this all was designed to help them with GCSE. Walking along the SouthWest coast path into Swanage the students then interviewed people about their sense of belonging in the local area and collected information about the cost of living crisis and whether Swanage is an expensive place to visit/live.
On Friday 21st June it was Lower 4’s turn to travel to the Living Rainforest near Newbury and hunt for a sloth. The group had very informative tours on amazing adaptations of plants and animals to the hot and wet tropical rainforest climate; they explored pitcher plants, hissing cockroaches, toucans and pygmy marmosets. Cinnamon the sloth was elusive all day unfortunately, … he was signposted but hiding very well much to everyone’s disappointment!
Lower 5 geographers donned their wellington boots on Monday 24th June, to measure river depth, width and velocity as part of their compulsory fieldwork element of GCSE paper 3 in the New Forest. They began at Balmer Lawn with a wide, fairly fast flowing river and ended up at Bagshot Gutter with a very narrow, steep sided river which was very narrow, shallow and hardly moving at all. Field sketches were drawn before heading into Lyndhurst for a well-deserved ice-cream on one of the hottest days of the year.
Thank you to all the staff that organised and supported the trips and to staff who covered lessons in their absence.
