Bring it on and take them out – another exciting time both in and out of the classroom!

In the autumn term, our Yr 9 pupils visited the Spectrum Centre as part of their Leisure and Tourism course. This provided the students with the opportunity to gather data which they then used to create their own projects. Yr 12 students took part in our annual trip to West Somerset visiting Exmoor National Park. The summer term has seen Yr 8 students visit Brighton to examine tourism, beaches and coastal defences and year ten students had a trip to Snowdonia as part of a four day residential trip. Finally students from Yrs 11 and 13 went to Iceland at the start of the summer for a bit of glacial and tectonic activity! All in all, we have been busy taking the students to the four corners of Europe. Next summer the plan is to visit Hawaii for the ultimate volcanic experience.

When we are not able to take out students out into the world to experience geography, we try to bring the world to them in the classroom. The model building skills of our younger geographers continue to develop with the year seven students building contour models, year 8 students designing coastal models and students from year nine building and erupting their own volcano. We have also begun to film students in the act of presenting their own BBC weather forecast programmes. Year 10 students are in the process of producing a piece of coursework based on their own field study. Our climate champion Aazim Ihsan also continues to push the important environmental issues that face our children and has been involved in a number of national initiatives.

So finally, we have tried to live up to the name of our subject, Geography, which is Greek means the study of our Earth. In the twenty first century , there is an increasing demand on us all to understand our planet and the globalised society in which we live.

A Wylie