October 2008

At the end of last half term all Year 9 students had a rainforest and desert experience in their Geography lessons!

Fieldtrips are essential in teaching Geography although it’s very hard to take Key Stage 3 students out of school due to the large numbers of students it would involve. It would also be very difficult and dangerous to take a class off to visit the Sahara or Gobi Desert or the Amazonian Rainforest! Instead, we try to bring in groups and speakers for our KS3 students. Year 9 students will have to wait until Key Stage 4 before they have any off-site trips in Geography.

This has been the third year that we have had the Zoolab company come into school to do a presentation for Year 9 Geography Students. Over two weeks in October each Geography class had the opportunity to come along to N207 to see the presentation. A ranger spoke to each group about a variety of animals found in rainforests & deserts – the topic the students are studying at the moment. Alex, the ranger, brought several animals found in arid areas, these included a corn snake and emperor scorpion and some from rainforests including a tarantula, tree frog and millipede.

Students were taught about where the various animals lived, what they ate and how they were adapted to live in their particular environment. All students were allowed to handle some of the creepy crawlies if they wanted to. The students behaved themselves very well overall and asked Alex lots of great questions about the various animals.

Do have a look at the gallery to see some of the photographs taken.