Year 12....
Wales is Monday 22nd to Friday 26th March.
The cost will be confirmed asap, but you need to get your permission slips and deposits (£20) in as soon as you can please!
Click on label below for more about Wales from previous years....
Monday, 23 November 2009
Update... (2)
Lots of plate tectonics work for Year 13 in the first few weeks of term - plate tectonics theory, evidence for the theory of continental drift, structure of the earth, locations of the major tectonic plates, types of plate boundary, and how plate boundaries affect volcanic activity.
We've also spent a long time working on fieldwork investigations in preparation for GEO4A in January. Look at the previous post if you need a reminder of the enquiry structure (you shouldn't!). The majority of the paper will be focused on your fieldwork enquiry, so you need to make sure that you know your investigation inside out. There will also be some questions based on secondary fieldwork data, and it might be that you have to do some calculations as well as interpreting and analysing the data.... Make sure that you have a look back at Spearman Rank and know how to calculate Rs values (AND test their statistical significance!). We will have a look at Mann-Whitney and Chi-Squared in the next couple of weeks.
Most of the Year 13 group also enjoyed a trip down to "the big smoke" just before half-term. Although it was a pleasant morning considering, the layby and the school minibus are not necessarily a welcome sight at 6am. A sleepy trip down the M1 and we were at Stanmore, and then - after an impressively quick assessment of the Tube map - it was the Jubilee Line to South Kensington (an opportunity for Miss Breider to do the SuDoku, Jonny to do the crossword, Myles to catch up on the news, Michael to collect some McDonald's vouchers, and Ellie to do her make-up), and then a v speedy walk to the Royal Geographical Society. There were a number of interesting lectures (although, admittedly, some of them might have been more appreciated had we not been up so early...) and some good advice about Geography at university. Before we left, we had a chance to explore the Map Room, and we tiptoed through the Fellows' Tea Room so that we could have our photo taken in front of the rather lovely perspex globe. (A shame Jonny felt it necessary to block the view of the lovely perspex globe...)
We made the most of our venture 'down south' with a trip to the Red Zone of the Natural History Museum, where we experienced the Kobe earthquake first hand, looked into the structure of the Earth in a bit more detail, and saw some of the rocks and 'spun sugar' produced by the eruption of Mount Saint Helen's in 1980.
We've also spent a long time working on fieldwork investigations in preparation for GEO4A in January. Look at the previous post if you need a reminder of the enquiry structure (you shouldn't!). The majority of the paper will be focused on your fieldwork enquiry, so you need to make sure that you know your investigation inside out. There will also be some questions based on secondary fieldwork data, and it might be that you have to do some calculations as well as interpreting and analysing the data.... Make sure that you have a look back at Spearman Rank and know how to calculate Rs values (AND test their statistical significance!). We will have a look at Mann-Whitney and Chi-Squared in the next couple of weeks.
Most of the Year 13 group also enjoyed a trip down to "the big smoke" just before half-term. Although it was a pleasant morning considering, the layby and the school minibus are not necessarily a welcome sight at 6am. A sleepy trip down the M1 and we were at Stanmore, and then - after an impressively quick assessment of the Tube map - it was the Jubilee Line to South Kensington (an opportunity for Miss Breider to do the SuDoku, Jonny to do the crossword, Myles to catch up on the news, Michael to collect some McDonald's vouchers, and Ellie to do her make-up), and then a v speedy walk to the Royal Geographical Society. There were a number of interesting lectures (although, admittedly, some of them might have been more appreciated had we not been up so early...) and some good advice about Geography at university. Before we left, we had a chance to explore the Map Room, and we tiptoed through the Fellows' Tea Room so that we could have our photo taken in front of the rather lovely perspex globe. (A shame Jonny felt it necessary to block the view of the lovely perspex globe...)
We made the most of our venture 'down south' with a trip to the Red Zone of the Natural History Museum, where we experienced the Kobe earthquake first hand, looked into the structure of the Earth in a bit more detail, and saw some of the rocks and 'spun sugar' produced by the eruption of Mount Saint Helen's in 1980.
Update.... (1)
Lots to catch up on as it has been a busy few weeks...
After spending the first few weeks of term getting to grips with the hydrological cycle and river processes, it was off to Dovedale for Year 12. Fortunately this time, it wasn't the morning after a Sixth Form Party, but the weather when we arrived at our first site was thoroughly grey and miserable, and the fog made it pretty difficult to see the nice v-shaped valley and interlocking spurs. Luckily, things improved as the day went on, and we almost had some sunshine when we got to Site 3. We measured a number of variables at each site - channel width and depth, velocity, gradient of the long profile, and size and angularity of bedload, with the aim of understanding how these variables changed with distance downstream. After lunch (and all those gates) we arrived at Milldale, from where we walked down Dovedale to the famous stepping stones, stopping to look at a variety of interesting geographical and geological features along the way, including Ilam Rock, the Tissingon Spires, Thorpe Cloud and Lover's Leap (although I was disappointed with the response that my rendition of the Lover's Leap legend received...). The highlight of the day, of course, was the ice cream...
For more about Dovedale, including various links, click on the label at the bottom of this post.
Since our return from Doevdale, we've spent a lot of lesson time writing up our findings in preparation for the GEOG2 exam in January. You should, by now, be very familiar with the enquiry structure:
- Aims (what you were trying to find out)
- Hypotheses (predictions of what you expected to find - with some theory to back them up!)
- Method (what you did - remember, your method should be clear enough that someone who knows nothing about what you were doing could replicate your investigation)
- Results (maps, graphs, tables, statistics, etc. - presentation of your findings)
- Analysis (discussion of the results of your investigation... make sure that you link back to your hypotheses)
- Conclusion (a summary of your findings - link back to your aims and hypotheses... Make sure that you are not saying anything new in this section!)
- Evaluation (what was successful about your investigation, what was less successful - and how could those problems have been resolved, how could you extend/develop the investigation?)
We also had to make sure that we considered the risks that we faced, and it might well be that you are asked about risk assessment in your GEOG2 exam.
After spending the first few weeks of term getting to grips with the hydrological cycle and river processes, it was off to Dovedale for Year 12. Fortunately this time, it wasn't the morning after a Sixth Form Party, but the weather when we arrived at our first site was thoroughly grey and miserable, and the fog made it pretty difficult to see the nice v-shaped valley and interlocking spurs. Luckily, things improved as the day went on, and we almost had some sunshine when we got to Site 3. We measured a number of variables at each site - channel width and depth, velocity, gradient of the long profile, and size and angularity of bedload, with the aim of understanding how these variables changed with distance downstream. After lunch (and all those gates) we arrived at Milldale, from where we walked down Dovedale to the famous stepping stones, stopping to look at a variety of interesting geographical and geological features along the way, including Ilam Rock, the Tissingon Spires, Thorpe Cloud and Lover's Leap (although I was disappointed with the response that my rendition of the Lover's Leap legend received...). The highlight of the day, of course, was the ice cream...
For more about Dovedale, including various links, click on the label at the bottom of this post.
Since our return from Doevdale, we've spent a lot of lesson time writing up our findings in preparation for the GEOG2 exam in January. You should, by now, be very familiar with the enquiry structure:
- Aims (what you were trying to find out)
- Hypotheses (predictions of what you expected to find - with some theory to back them up!)
- Method (what you did - remember, your method should be clear enough that someone who knows nothing about what you were doing could replicate your investigation)
- Results (maps, graphs, tables, statistics, etc. - presentation of your findings)
- Analysis (discussion of the results of your investigation... make sure that you link back to your hypotheses)
- Conclusion (a summary of your findings - link back to your aims and hypotheses... Make sure that you are not saying anything new in this section!)
- Evaluation (what was successful about your investigation, what was less successful - and how could those problems have been resolved, how could you extend/develop the investigation?)
We also had to make sure that we considered the risks that we faced, and it might well be that you are asked about risk assessment in your GEOG2 exam.
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