Geography Fieldwork
Last weekend, A Level Geographers enjoyed a trip to Slapton Ley in Devon to study urban regeneration and coastal processes.
After a scenic, three-hour train journey, the group arrived in sunny Devon, greeted by a waving Miss Humphreys at Totnes station, who had driven down in the school minibus. Students had a quick introduction to the field studies centre with our local guide, before formulating investigative questions to compare the two rural settlements of Slapton and Chillington. The next day, after a brief morning classroom session, they headed off into the village of Slapton to study environmental quality and develop a sense of place, using iPads to track emotions in various locations. Chillington was then visited where the same methods were used and later compared back in the classroom in the evening.
On Saturday, the students boarded the minibus to Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City, to evaluate the success of urban regeneration, notably Drake Circus, the Barbican and Plymouth Hoe. Back in the classroom, secondary data and GIS was used to display deprivation and decline in the city. After dinner, the teachers set up a viewing room for Eurovision, complete with flags, balloons, glow sticks and snacks.
On Sunday, the sun came out for their Coastal Processes fieldwork. Along an 8km stretch of coastline, the girls stopped off to measure the beach profile, sediment size and impact of sea level rise on local communities. When all results were collected, data was entered into a spreadsheet to produce line graphs to show our specific beach profiles at each location. On the final walk back to the Field Studies Centre, the heavens opened – the girls had never been so happy to see the school minibus after a long day outdoors! Back in the classroom, students performed T-tests and Mann-Whitney U on the coastal data.
Monday saw the final day of the trip, with a visit to Totnes to explore rural regeneration before jumping on the train back to London. The annual trip aims to help students to consider both human and physical disciplines, while supporting them to develop ideas for their ‘independent investigation’, which will form a large part of their geographical studies this term and next.