Year 11 Geographers Carry Out their Urban Enquiries and River Investigations

Top and tailing the week, on Monday 21st and Friday 25th March, our Year 11 Geographers took to the Field Studies Centre in Amersham to carry out urban enquiries and river investigations. Building upon the theory that they have covered in their iGCSE course on river and urban environments, the field trip provided a great opportunity for students to see first-hand the landscapes they have studied.

On Monday, the group mapped land use changes along a transect line through High Wycombe and completed environmental quality and bipolar surveys. Later in the week, kitted out in wellington boots and waterproofs, they carried out an investigation along the River Chess, measuring changes in the channel and testing water quality.

“The fieldwork has provided a chance for us to visualise the landforms we are studying and link Geography to our daily lives! I have learnt a lot from the fieldtrips, especially teamwork!” enthused Kristen.

Reflecting on his experience, Louis, commented “Our investigation on Monday consisted of answering the question ‘How does the urban environment change in High Wycombe moving away from the CBD (Central Business District)?’. To answer this question, we have covered different types of sampling strategies. The most suitable for our investigation was systematic, sampling over equal distance, for example every 75 metres. At each point in the city we had to measure levels of litter, green spaces, traffic and vandalism. We also had the opportunity to interview people in the street to collect qualitative data. The sort of questions we asked were how they rated the city out of ten. The interview part was my favourite as I was able to learn more about the city through other people’s point of view such as residents. I learned about the different ways of collecting data methodologies. It helped us to understand the processes and the potential risks which are questions which could come up in our GCSE urbanisation paper.”

Kristen remarked, “On Monday, we carried out field sketches, collected data, and did questionnaires with local citizens to find out how the urban area changes according to the distance between that certain area and the central business district. Our group also found people from our home country; it felt so warm and surprising!”

Louis continued, “In our other trip on Friday we went through doing measurements in a river called Chess. We went through measuring the velocity of the river by using different tools such as a hydroprop, tape measure, stopwatch and metre ruler. We measured the depth, length and speed of the river and the bedload by picking up pebbles. Those measurements allowed us to measure the discharge of the river as we moved away from the source. My favourite part of this trip was going into the river and taking all the measurements because we were in groups of friends and it was the most interesting part as well. We learned about another way of sampling, the stratified method, which consists of choosing the point on the river we wanted to investigate. This was very helpful for our examination because it enabled us to find out about the risk assessments and the sampling methods used during a river investigation.”

“On Friday, it was my first time to experience being in a river, as there are only a few accessible rivers back in my hometown, Hong Kong. Stepping in the river to take measurements was obviously my favourite part of the trip and a memorable experience for us all.” added Kristen.

Head of Geography, Oliver, commented “The urban day is a compressed process of enquiry – everything from planning to the evaluation. The theory is possible through classroom learning but fieldwork questions on the exam papers score consistently low for students nationally and fieldwork is so much more valuable for this than being at a desk. This is so close to exams, so the experiential knowledge is so fresh in student’s heads to enable them to really impress in their GCSEs.”