Wednesday 29 October 2008

Year 12 River Dove Visit

Despite several of the party not being entirely "with it" at the start of the day, the Year 12 geographers had a good visit to the River Dove just before half-term. The morning was spent measuring a variety of channel characteristics at several different sites along the upper course of the River Dove. Google Maps is not cooperating at the moment, but hopefully will be able to add in a map showing the sites we visited here soon.

After lunch we arrived at Milldale, where we had a look round the National Trust Information Barn and then set off walking down Dovedale, stopping along the way to look at a variety of fantastic geological features and to think about how the river was continuing to change.


(I'll save the photos of the ice cream eating for school!)

The "mystery building" at Site 3 was a gauging station (yes, that was Wikipedia link...), and we saw another one near to the end of our walk at the bottom of Dovedale. A variety of data for the Hollinsclough gauging station (which is no longer in use), the Izaak Walton gauging station (and every other gauging station in the UK!) is available from the National Environment Research Council.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

UK Tourism and Coursework

Period 3 was spent looking at UK tourism case studies - remember you have a list of questions to base your work on, but should also include a map (or maps) and anything else that you think is useful or interesting (especially about tonnes of fish....). Don't forget about the article about heritage tourism that I gave you - very important that you understand terms such as heritage tourism, cultural tourism, etc.

Period 4 was more coursework time. Most of you are now well on the way and have clear plans for what you are doing in terms of data collection during half-term. I will remind you tomorrow but:

- field sketches are a really useful thing to be able to include in your projects
- photographs (especially digital ones that you can annotate easily) are also a valuable addition to your project, and if you are doing a physical project, might help with things like plant identification... also get your family/friends/whoever to take pictures of you doing your work - we had plenty of amusement with the Wales pictures (and we still haven't seen all of them - Joel and Laura!) so no reason why we shouldn't break up our "long and drawn-out" Wednesday morning lessons with some more photo-viewing!!
- make sure that you have everything that you need with you... most of you have given me details of what you need in terms of equipment... we should have ranging poles sorted, and so you will need to come up straighaway at the end of school on Friday to collect equipment. If there is a problem with this, you need to let me know asap - I am not here on Thursday as I am out on fieldwork with Year 12, and I am spending my free period on Friday collecting ranging poles!!
- be flexible and think on your feet... You might find when you get to your fieldwork location that things are not quite as you expected... If you are forced to change your plans, don't worry!! A student a few years ago, for example, was looking at LSD on a spit.... He spent a day collecting lots of data and then found when he went back to continue the following day that a huge storm overnight had completely changed the shape of the beach - he changed his plans and produced (arguably) a better piece of work as a result...
- email if you need some help... Don't wait til we get back and then tell me that you got stuck and didn't know what to do. I am away from Friday until Sunday, but will be within reach of a computer for the rest of the week... if in doubt, ask!!
- enjoy yourself!! You will need to work hard to make sure that you have all the data that you need, but you have picked a project that interests you and you are all going to interesting locations (well, most of you anyway...) - make the most of it!

If you haven't had a meeting with whoever is supervising your project, you must must must make sure that you do so tomorrow - we are all out on Thursday for Year 12 fieldwork, and Friday is cutting it a bit fine!

Monday 20 October 2008

Year 12 - River Landforms

Some v good posters this morning..... We talked about:

- v-shaped valleys
- interlocking spurs
- rapids
- waterfalls
- gorges
- potholes
- braiding
- meanders
- oxbow lakes
- floodplains
- levees
- deltas

We also discussed turbulent and laminar flow...

Please remember that if you haven't already returned your permission slip and money for Thursday, you MUST do so as a matter of urgency!

Thursday 16 October 2008

Year 13 coursework...

Don't forget that you need - if you haven't already done so - to make an appointment to see whoever is "supervising" your project.

Miss Thurston - Lucy, Liam and Jak

Miss Bradford - Amy and Chantal

Me - Laura, Anna, Lottie, Hannah, Ben, Ed and Joel

Make sure that you bring with you all your notes, ideas, work, etc. with you to your meeting!

Year 12 River Dove Visit

The ppt that we used in this morning's lesson with the details of what we will be doing on our field visit next Thursday can be downloaded here. Make sure that you understand each of the variables we'll be looking at - and how to measure them, and remember please that for Monday, you need to be designing a simple recording sheet to use "in the field".

We will be leaving school at 8.30am on Thursday, and intend to be back by 5.30pm.

You will need to have a packed lunch with you, and will need to be suitably dressed with plenty of warm clothing, waterproofs, etc. Wellies for the morning if you have them, and walking boots or sturdy shoes for the afternoon.

If you look back a few posts you will find the Where's the Path? site which will allow you to look at full screen OS maps of the area we'll be visiting. Our first site will be at Axe Edge - the source of the River Dove, and we will then visit 4 more sites between there and Beresford Dale/Wolfscotedale. At lunchtime, we'll get to the Milldale carpark, near the "top" of Dovedale, and we'll spend the afternoon walking down Dovedale to the carpark near the famous stepping stones.

Tourism in the UK...

...was the topic for this morning's lesson.

We talked about some of the key tourist destinations in the UK, and thought about how we might classify them. We also clarified our understanding of domestic tourism - make sure you've filled it in on your glossary sheet!

On Tuesday (remember, p3 not p4) we will be in C1, and you will be researching a variety of tourism case studies. Before then, have a think about different types of UK tourism - particularly rural tourism (inc National Parks, literary and TV/film locations such as 'Wordsworth Country' and 'Heartbeat Country'), holiday villages (eg Center Parcs), urban tourism and heritage tourism.

Wednesday 15 October 2008

Year 13

Tuesday

We spent the first part of p3 reminding ourselves about the statistical, graphical and cartographical techniques that you might want to use in your projects... Most of you now have your proposals more or less sorted - if not you need to get sorted very very soon!

P4 we looked at the development of tourism in the UK - inland resorts in the form of spa towns in the 18th century, and then the development of seaside resorts. We then considered how tourism has changed more recently, and tomorrow we will have a look at rural tourism (inc national parks) and heritage tourism.

Don't forget that your essay question needs to be completed for Thursday 6th November (not October... oops!) - speak to me BEFORE then if you are struggling.

Wednesday

The main focus of this morning's lesson, was fluvioglacial features, and you need to be having a look for photos of the various landforms that we discussed. As I have mentioned before, Flickr is an excellent source of photographs and if you use the search function, you are likely to be able to find images of most - if not all - of the landforms we talked about this morning. It is also well worth checking out Geograph (where they are celebrating as the millionth image was uploaded today - yay!!).

A set of useful links here and you can access the BGS Blakeney Esker site that we mentioned by clicking on the picture below:

Year 12 - River Processes

We spent Monday's lesson looking at river processes - how AND why rivers erode, transport and deposit material.

We also spent a long time thinking about the Hjulstrom Curve.

This might be a helpful reminder...

On Thursday, we will be spending the skills lesson preparing for next week's field visit. If you want to have a look at where we'll be going, check out the photos I've put on Geogtastic, or do a quick internet search for River Dove or Dovedale.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Year 13

Tuesday....

We started by looking at the coursework requirements and markscheme in more detail and you got thinking about your plans. You can access the markscheme (and a couple of other bits about coursework) on the AQA website.

Remember please, that you need to have your proposal (no more than 2 sides of A4) ready for Tuesday. If you are still struggling then come and see me or email me BEFORE Tuesday.

We then had a look at tourism in Betws-y-Coed and Trefriw, and you compared the effects that tourism has had on the two settlements (or at least you would have done if we'd managed to all be there and all have proper sets of results!!).

Wednesday...

This morning we started by completing our analysis of the deposits we studied at Llyn Ogwen, the Nant Ffrancon valley and the gravel pit. Some of you drew histograms (to look at length of long axis), some drew pie charts of divided bars to look at the angularity of the clasts, and others drew rose diagrams to show the orientation of the clasts. You came to the conclusion that the first deposit was glacial - collapsed lateral moraine, perhaps! The second one seemed to be either fluvio-glacial deposits, or glacial deposits that have later been affected by fluvial action. We were less sure about the third site, but were fairly certain that the deposits there had been affected by glacial and fluvial processes.

We then spent some time considering the maps and panoramic photos of Llyn Ogwen, Cwm Idwal and Nant Ffrancon. Remember, north is not always at the top! Worth checking out this virtual tour of Cwm Idwal:

Today, it was a bit more thinking about coursework - remember, lots of useful stuff on the internet if you look for it, and some very good articles in Geography Review. Good that some of you were using Google Earth to try and identify suitable locations - you need to have a look at OS maps as well (see post from the other day about Where's the Path?).

Have fun in London!

Year 12

On Monday we spent a lot of time talking about the factors that affect river discharge, and at storm hydrographs.

The website we looked at with the storm hydrograph stuff was this one

Don't forget please, that you have the Factors Affecting Discharge sheets to complete for tomorrow to give to Mrs Chambers.

Also remember that if you click on the Water on the Land or rivers/hydrographs, etc. labels at the bottom of this post, you will be able to access the posts from this time last year when the current Yr13 were looking at rivers and hydrographs...

Saturday 4 October 2008

Don't try this at home...

Can't remember who I was talking to about BASE jumping and other such bizarre activities the other day (Ed?) but you could have a good game of "spot the glacial landforms..." with this! (Thanks Val!)

Where's the path?

I thought that I had posted about the excellent "Where's the Path?" before but if I did I can't find it now. However, I've just been exploring it further and either I didn't look properly before or it's been updated, and you can not only get full-screen OS mapping, but can look at OS maps alongside various different Google Maps...


Thanks to Noel Jenkins who spotted it first!

Wet and Windy Wales!

Currently sorting through my 234 photos and video clips from Wales... Here's a taster...

Sheep Drop!

Sheep Rock...


The place with the very long name...
The Grand Canyon (before Laura destroyed it!)

And Joel's art work...

Despite the weather, it was a great week - you worked hard, you were pleasant and polite, and you provided plenty of entertainment!! Very good eggs!