5th Year Geographers Enjoy a Day in the Dunes

Sunny weather, warm conditions and a day on the beach. It all sounds like a relaxing day in one of Cornwall’s beauty spots but we can assure you that our 5th Years were hard at work today.

Seventy-six 5th Year Geography students spent the day at Perran Sands in order to study the sand dunes.

As part of their GCSE the students must complete fieldwork studies with this year’s focus being on the use of transects as a technique to obtain primary data.

The pupils have previously visited Falmouth to complete an urban assessment and so, by studying sand dunes, it offers the pupils a chance to look at a contrasting environment. They spent the day documenting the gradient of the dunes and the succession of species along the transect to record any succession as they moved inland.

Head of Geography, Ms Wormald, commented on how the students have,

“Completed the work in a fun and positive way today.”

The students will next have to use the information that they have gathered to draw accurate beach profiles. Today’s fieldtrip was an essential part of the new reformed GCSE. Later in the year; they will be tested on their understanding of how to methodically and reliably collect, present, analyse and evaluate data.

With plenty more field trips in store to enrich their learning Ms Wormald hopes to improve on the impressive 88% A* to B achieved in the latest 2017 Geography GCSE results.