Fifth Former fieldwork - Hurstpierpoint College

Fifth Former fieldwork

As part of their IGCSE Geography course, two groups of Fifth Formers set off for Seaford beach on 25th September to undertake socially distanced fieldwork.

To help aid social distancing, two simultaneous trips were organised – one in the morning, another in the afternoon – and the fieldwork was completed in house bubbles to enable students to practice a range of techniques necessary for their paper 4 IGCSE exam.

Students completed a range of fieldwork tasks on ‘stations’ which included: beach profiling to measure and record the gradient of the beach, sediment analysis on a transect up the beach and then measuring of longshore drift.

They engaged with each of these fieldwork tasks, discussed methods and sampling techniques as well as effective ways to ensure that the collected data was as accurate as possible. They worked well together in their bubbles to ensure they had good quality data to represent the methods they had planned in lessons prior to the trip. Students also drew and annotated field sketches for the numerous geographical features and landforms found at Seaford Beach and effectively described and explained their formation to support the content they have been learning in lessons for their ‘Coasts’ topic.

Despite the drop in temperature compared to previous weeks, all students engaged positively, effectively and achieved the desired outcomes of the trip to support the requirements for their IGCSE exam Beccy Bownas, Head of Geography