North Wales...

I'm pleased to report that the weather forecast for North Wales for the past few days was wrong, and although it was a bit cold and windy, we saw very little in the way of precipitation!

Plenty of good photos - many of which demonstrate Yr12's ability to pull strange faces... We'll look at them properly next week, but here are a few:

Cwm Idwal
View from Clogwyn Station

View down the Llanberis valley from Pen-y-Pass (no hail in this pic!)

The Conwy estuary and Llandudno from Conwy Mountain (see what you missed out on!!)

It was a great few days - you worked very hard, asked lots of good questions, and provided plenty of entertainment.

Norfolk Coast

Currently exploring the Norfolk Coast blog - some lovely photos and lots of good geography!

Yr13 - Tectonics

Those of us who were here on Wednesday reminded ourselves about the structure of the earth and talked about plate tectonics theory.

You then put some nice maps together showing the major tectonic plates and the directions in which they are moving.

For the next time I see you, you need to be finding out about the main types of plate margin:

Destructive (convergent) - oceanic/oceanic, oceanic/continental, continental/continental

Constructive (divergent)

Conservative

For each, you need to be thinking about processes and landforms, you need a named/located example, and you need a diagram.

You might also like to check out the post on Geogtastic about Hunga Ha'apai, the underwater volcano near Tonga that erupted earlier in the week - some spectacular photos about, and also check out the Smithsonian Global Vulcanism and USGS Earthquake Monitoring overlays in Google Earth.

Yr13 - Inner Cities

Housing issues on Tuesday - the Prezi is here and this is the article from The Guardian that I gave you copies of. We also had a look at Val Vannet's writing about the Dundee tenements that she passed regularly on her way to work, and how the area has changed.

For the next time I see you, on Tuesday 31st March, your groups need to be ready with presentations on UDCs, City Challenge, and the 21st century inner city initiatives such as "sustainable communities".

There are lots of links on Geography Pages that might be of use to you, particularly in the GCSE Settlement section.

Also:

Urban Development Corporations
City Challenge Partnerships Evaluation
The Sustainable Communities Plan

Yr12 Cold Environments

Periglaciation this week - discussion of what "periglacial" means, climate of periglacial areas (and a climate graph for Svalbard, which I should have from all of you by now), permafrost, periglacial processes (freezing/thawing of permafrost, frost-heave, nivation, freeze-thaw weathering). On Monday, we'll have a look at periglacial landforms.

As ever, click on the tags at the bottom of the post to link to previous posts about periglaciation, links, etc.

Yr12 - GIS and Health

Last Thursday, we had a look at GIS and this site which allows you to investigate a variety of indicators related to health and quality of life, to compare these indicators by area, and to create health profiles for particular areas.

Don't forget that you need to be completing the worksheet for me for this Thursday (p1).

Yr12 Cold Environments

Whilst I was off, you were researching and putting together a timeline and an annotated map showing the human activity in Antarctica. I now have that work from most of you, but there are still a few who didn't manage to find their way to the Humanities Block before the end of schoool today, and I am not very happy about that.

You also should have spent some time checking that you had thorough notes about each of the glacial landforms we mentioned (U-shaped valleys/glacial troughs, ribbon lakes, corries, aretes, pyramidal peaks, roche moutonnees and drumlins).

Yesterday, we looked at fluvioglaciation - processes and landforms caused by glacial meltwater. The photos we looked at at the start of the lesson were of Skeidarasandur - lots more on Flickr and it is worth a quick search to find out a bit more about the jokulhlaups that we mentioned.

For Tuesday next week (to Mrs Chambers), I asked you to describe and explain the landforms that you would expect to find in a fluvioglacial landscape. (You should be including outwash plains, braided streams, eskers and beaded eskers, kames and kame terraces, kettle holes, diverted drainage and proglacial lakes.)

Yr13 - Cities

You should, today, have handed in your work using the Neighbourhood Statistics site and the Derby City Partnership site. Thank you to those of you who did - if you are one of the people who didn't, you know what you need to do...

We spent Thursday's lesson mapping the best and worst places to live in the UK (according to Phil and Kirstie) and we spent the first part of today's lesson talking about the patterns that the maps showed and the possible reasons for this.

We then went on to think about the causes of inner city decline, and discussed some of the problems of inner city areas and how they've come about, and the cycle of deprivation. Don't forget though, that I also gave you a piece of writing by Tony Cassidy, a geography teacher who lives in inner city Nottingham - an interesting alternative perspective.

Linking back to the Bradford work that we did recently, you might be interested to know that the Westfield development has been "put on ice" according to an article in the Telegraph & Argus. Unsurprisingly, there have been plenty of letters in response to the news, and if you search for "westfield" on the T&A website, you can look at those, as well as a number of other related articles. The "Bradford Metropolitan District Council, Pull Your Finger Out" group on Facebook is also worth a look!

Yr13 - Coasts

Last Wednesday we spent quite a lot of time looking at three coastal management case studies - copies of the work that you produced tomorrow.

I also asked you to find out about coastal barrages - what they are, how they work, and an example (Cardiff Bay Barrage is one example you could use). I also asked you to think about the proposals for the Severn Barrage, and be prepared to tell me tomorrow whether or not you think it should go ahead.

Sorry!!!

Apologies for the lack of updates recently... Busy busy!!

Coastal Management Links

Isle of Wight (mainly hard engineering)
Isle of Wight Centre for the Coastal Environment
Medina Valley Field Centre

Netherlands (large scale scheme)
Delta Works Online
Coastal Guide (use search function - Netherlands)

Sefton Coast, NW England (small scale scheme)
Sands of Time
Sefton Coast Partnership