Geography is the study of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, the human responses to them, and increasingly, the human effects upon them. Geography gives you an insight into issues which affect your everyday life. The geography department at Fyling Hall has run a number of popular fieldwork trips and interesting projects this year to prepare year 11 for their GCSEs, and also across the school. Here is a quick summary and some photos of what’s been going on:

Year 11 Geography Field Work

Year 11 are taking their GCSE exams in May and June. In readiness for their exams they completed Geography fieldwork. As they now get an exam on fieldwork, they no longer have to write up coursework but do need to work through their data. They have to understand it and justify what they did and why. They must collect field data on a physical study and urban one so earlier this year they headed out;

Rivers – we visited Maybeck to carry out an investigation into how and why a river changes from source to mouth. Once there, they measured the width, the depth and the velocity of the river, as well as sediment size. From this they can work out how a river erodes material as it travels in the channel. 

Urban – we visited Malton to conduct our urban study. Here, they did pedestrian and traffic counts on certain street, to see how busy the area was. They also did an EQI (see year 9 above) – although a more detailed version, and a land use survey of certain streets. This is where buildings are classified and given a score depending on what they do (cafes, hairdressers, bank, etc.) We would expect the streets in the CBD (Central Business District) to be more varied and score higher (fewer residential buildings) than streets on the periphery.

All of this helped them to be prepared for Paper 3 of their GCSEs.

Year 9 Fieldwork

Earlier this year, year 9 also conducted their fieldwork. They investigated development and urban decline. As part of that, we went to Whitby to conduct an environmental quality index. This is a way of scoring streets on their appearance, noise levels, litter, greenery, etc. They can then add the scores up and decide which street scored best, and why (better area? better views?).

Tourism – Where am I?

Over the last few weeks year 9 geography students have been working on tourism. They created something to represent a city or a country. It had to be something iconic. This challenge began during lock-down but proved so popular, it continued. Here are the results of their efforts.  

What Next?

Another trip is being considered for the summer term – to the coast to observe the biggest mainland seabird colony in the UK.

If want to know more about studying geography at A-Level or GCSE, or discuss career options or university degrees that lead on from Geography A-Level, then please contact Miss Gilmour.