Viewing archives for Geography

Three QE boys were finalists in a national Geography competition run by Christ Church, Oxford.

Shreyas Mone, of Year 10, Zhuoer Chen, of Year 9, and Sarang Nair, of Year 7, were among just ten finalists nationwide.

All three were invited with their parents to a special prize-giving day at Christ Church, one of the largest and most famous of all the Oxford University colleges. The day included a pitch to encourage the visiting high-flyers to consider studying Geography there.

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “My congratulations go to Shreyas and to Zhuoer and Sarang on their success.”

The competition, which is part of Christ Church’s outreach work, was open to all UK state school pupils in Years 7–10. Entrants had to submit a video 2–5 minutes long on a geographical issue or phenomenon that was local to them.

The day featured screenings of the videos, a prize-giving ceremony, a tour of the college, and talks from current students and staff. There was also a workshop about geopolitics in popular culture, which covered, inter alia, the issues of missile tests in Iron Man and mineral resources in Black Panther, as well as how Bond villains were supposedly based upon enemies of the USA.

Shreyas’s video – entitled Why is the UK’s weather so dismal? – explored why the UK has mild temperatures and high rainfall, compared to the cold, dry conditions of Canada, when, for example, Calgary is on a latitude slightly to the south of London.

The video compared average yearly temperatures at Greenwich weather station with those at Calgary and found they were 11.35C higher.

This, Shreyas explained, is partly because of the Gulf Stream bringing warm water to Britain and conversely the Labrador current taking cold water to southern Canada. In the video, he addresses why this affects the weather in inland areas, rather than just the coast.

His video was illustrated by a range of maps and photos and even a clip of a fox jumping into snow, with colourful captions setting out his argument.

Shreyas was inspired to enter the competition after seeing it advertised by Head of Geography Emily Parry on eQE, the School’s remote learning platform.

Sarang’s video on the Effects of floods in Hertfordshire included photos of recent floods; it looked at where flood plains are and explored whether houses should be built on flood plains.

Sixth-formers observed striking evidence of coastal erosion during a three-day residential trip to Essex.

The 20 Year 12 geographers were able to inspect two World War II pillboxes that had fallen off the cliff at Walton-on-the-Naze and are now exposed by the sea at low tide.

Head of Geography Emily Parry added that other historical attractions date much further back than the war.

“This coast’s unique geology has fossilised shark teeth and the remains of ancient mangrove forest, which are now hidden within the soft clay. The boys enjoyed searching for (and claiming to have found!) them.

“For many students it was the first time on a School trip of this kind for over three years and they enjoyed the change of scene and of pace.”

During the trip, the boys completed fieldwork to investigate sediment size, infiltration rate and gradient at multiple sites along Walton Beach.

The party stayed in the Grade I-listed Flatford Mill. Today owned by the National Trust and leased to the Field Studies Council, the mill was owned by successive generations of the Constable family and was the subject of one of John Constable’s most famous paintings, completed in 1816.

One of the boys, Abhiraj Singh, said that the visit had brought their Coasts unit of work to life, while his classmate, Mithil Parmar, added: “It was a fantastic three-day residential, giving us a break from the classroom environment and a chance to see Geography in action.”

Old Elizabethan Makoto Takahashi, a global expert on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan, gave a group of current sixth-formers a special invitation to an exhibition he has curated.

Featuring photography and a number of essays, the exhibition, which marks the tenth anniversary of the nuclear disaster and the earthquake and tsunami that precipitated it, is being held at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 15,000 and triggered a triple meltdown at the power station, forcing 200,000 people from their homes.

Makoto (OE 2003-2010) treated the 13 Art & Design and Geography A-level students to a lecture and a personal tour.

Head of Art Craig Wheatley said: “The exhibition explores the lingering legacy of the 2011 disaster. There is a sophisticated and diverse range of photography that challenged the boys’ appreciation of both the aesthetic and conceptual. Having Makoto’s insight was invaluable; his willingness to explain and unpack the work was matched by the boys’ enthusiasm and desire to learn more.”

“In his QE days, Makoto was himself a talented A-level artist and geographer,” Mr Wheatley said.

He is a lecturer at the Technical University of Munich and will be returning to the Harvard Kennedy School of Governance as a Fulbright-Lloyd’s Fellow in early 2022.

He began work on the Fukushima Daiichi disaster ten years ago, soon after it happened. He received his BA, MPhil and PhD from Cambridge University and was a visiting fellow at Waseda University in Tokyo.

His thesis, which examined how claims to expert authority are made in conditions of low public trust, received the American Association of Geographers’ Jacques May Thesis Prize.

The exhibition, entitled Picturing the Invisible, sees his research interests coming together with his longstanding engagement with the London art scene: while in the Sixth Form at QE, he took part in in the Royal Academy’s attRAct programme and in the Louis Vuitton Young Arts Program; he has also been an Event Manager at the OPEN Ealing community art gallery.

Expressing his gratitude to Makoto, Mr Wheatley added: “As a cross curricular trip between the Art and Geography departments, this was a fabulous opportunity for learning.  It combined detailed analysis of visual language with geological narrative of the ‘worst crisis Japan has faced since World War II’.”

The exhibition is on until 23^rd December.

Boys studying Geography headed off to both city and country as field trips returned to their pre-pandemic ‘normal’ for the first time.

On their Human Geography trip, A-level students investigated gentrification in Wandsworth, where they met residents only too willing to share their views on how their area had changed.

On their more rural trip, pictured, Year 11 geographers encountered some locals, too ­– deer in Epping Forest ­­– while also having to face the challenge of understanding why the results of their practical investigation did not line up with classroom theory.

Head of Geography Emily Parry said: “We took 159 boys on field trips ­– 131 Year 11 pupils to Epping Forest over two days and 28 from Year 12 and Year 13 to Northcote ward in Wandsworth.

“It was great to be able to get out again, as so many trips had to be cancelled last year. Fieldwork is a very valuable part of Geography, as it gives the students real-world experience of what they have been studying in the classroom – helping both to consolidate and extend their learning. It also helps them develop skills which are difficult to develop in the classroom alone, such as teamwork and dynamic problem-solving in a changing environment.”

The Year 11 Physical Geography fieldwork in Epping Forest involved answering the question: How do river characteristics change with distance downstream along Loughton Brook? The boys went to three sites along the river and investigated its width, depth, velocity and sediment size & roundness. The fieldwork was led by staff from Epping Forest Field Studies Centre and was part of the AQA GCSE Geography course.

The field trip helped to consolidate boys’ understanding of rivers, which they had previously studied in a unit titled Physical Landscapes of the UK.

“We were lucky to have dry weather on both days and fortunate to see the deer,” Miss Parry added.

“We found that the width, depth and velocity did change downstream as predicted by the Bradshaw model, but there wasn’t a clear trend in terms of sediment size and roundness. This was in part due to human error during data collection, and in part due to the fact that this is a seasonal river and that, because of the lack of rainfall recently, water levels were low.”

“This was a valuable learning opportunity, as it enabled pupils to better understand the ‘messiness’ of ‘geographical reality’,” said Miss Parry.

For their Human Geography studies, boys made a short visit in the summer to investigate the question: To what extent is Barnet High Street a successful high street?

More recently, this month’s visit by Year 12 and 13 pupils to south London had as its goal exploration of the question: To what extent has Northcote ward undergone the process of gentrification? The visit was for part of a unit of study for the Edexcel A-level course entitled Regenerating Places, under which the sixth-formers are looking at the London boroughs of Wandsworth and Newham.

The fieldwork study allowed them to gain first-hand experience of how the borough of Wandsworth has changed. They completed a range of fieldwork techniques, including environmental quality surveys, land-use mapping and questionnaires.

“It was concluded that the Northcote ward area has been gentrified. This was evidenced through the range of boutique and high-end shops found along Northcote Road, the quality of the housing and built environment, plus the changing demographics of the area.

“The boys met some local residents who had lived in the area a long time and were keen to share their views on how the area has changed dramatically in recent decades – some sharing a view that people were being priced out of the area.”

The trip also included one further discovery of note, Miss Parry added: “The Year 12 & 13 boys were very happy to find out there was a Nando’s on Northcote Road where they could have their lunch!”

Experts have been helping QE A-level students see the exciting topical applications of their subjects in the real world in a series of lectures streamed into the School.

Sixth-formers have already enjoyed stimulating day-long sessions on Medicine in Action, Chemistry in Action, Product Design in Action and Geography in Action, with a similar event for Biology due to take place in December.

The training days are run by The Training Partnership, the leading provider of external educational study days in the UK, and would normally be held in London, but are this year being conducted remotely because of Covid-19.

QE’s Head of Technology, Michael Noonan, said that the Product Design A-level students, and even a couple of “enthusiastic non-subject specialists”, enjoyed a “superb day” of lectures. “Favourite amongst the talks attended by students was Pioneering aeronautical innovation by Sam Rogers – an aeronautical engineer working in product development for Gravity Industries, a company who are currently developing a jetpack suit.”

One of the pupils attending, Paul Ofordu, of Year 12, said: “It was amazing to see the application of prototyping, testing and iterative design in such a high-end product development project.”

The Resourcefulness and design lecture, delivered by Kingston University Senior Lecturer Pascal Anson, stimulated a practical activity, pictured. “Here we see some examples of structures which were resourcefully developed by the students using VEX IQ and EDR Robotics game elements – great thinking on their feet!” added Mr Noonan.

Chemistry students gathered in the Main School Hall to hear engaging contributions from speakers who ranged from Andrea Sella, a synthetic chemist and broadcaster, talking about mercury – “the most beautiful element in the periodic table and the most reviled” – to marine engineer Hayley Loren exploring whether nuclear fusion could provide the solution to the world’s energy issues.

Julia Lister, QE’s Head of Chemistry, said: “The engaging Chemistry in Action lectures covered an array of topics. Streaming these lectures took students from key concepts to cutting-edge science and future directions across many applications of the subject.”

The Geography lectures were similarly wide-ranging. One talk, entitled Lessons in sustainability: An explorer’s tale, was by Jason Lewis, the first person to circumnavigate the earth without using motors or sails. Another featured academic Martin Evans, from the University of Manchester, speaking on Landscape Systems in the Anthropocene. And Emily Parry, Head of Geography, highlighted lectures on water insecurity and on how COVID-19 has impacted the Pacific Islands.

“The boys enjoyed the talks, which both built up content covered in their A-level course and extended their knowledge on a range of issues facing the planet,” she said.

“Each lecture was followed with a Q&A session in which the boys could send in questions to the lecturer. Often questions focused around what young people themselves could do to help address some of the issues explored such as climate change, river pollution and how we choose a sustainable future.”

Head of Biology Gillian Ridge said that after the forthcoming Biology in Action day, boys who attend will be invited to give a series of lunchtime presentations to the rest of their year based on the talks.

Year 8 geographers have been getting creative as they grapple with the possible future effects of unchecked climate change.

The boys spent the first half of this term studying the topic, with many entering a QE competition challenging them to compose a poem or short story describing the world in the year 2100, when the world has warmed by 2 degrees.

The Geography department teamed up with Head of English Robert Hyland to judge the entries. Keon Robert has now been announced as the winner in the short story category, while Shreyas Chandrasekar was adjudged to have submitted the best poem.

Emily Parry, Head of Geography, said: ‘I was very impressed with the standard of submissions and the boys’ awareness of the potential impacts of climate change. The creative poems and stories clearly highlight the threat that climate change poses for all of us.”

The competition results were announced as the British Government unveiled its plan for a “green industrial revolution”, bringing forward a ban on petrol and diesel cars and announcing other measures, such as an expansion of offshore wind, hydrogen and nuclear power generation.

In his story, entitled Our Planet is on Fire, Keon imagined a dystopian future in a polluted city of 3 billion souls, its population swelled by immigrants from other countries seeking refuge from the effects of climate change.

There is no respite from the gloom: the story ends with the protagonist attending a meeting at his factory which, as he suspected, is to be closed down, as the authorities  try desperately – “too little, too late” – to deal with the crisis.

He reflects ruefully on the missed opportunities to deal with climate change that had brought the world to this point: “We knew it was going to happen, but we never did anything about it. In the end, it strikes us when we least expect it.”

Most of Shreyas’s poem is equally bleak – “none of us will survive” – and he adds anger into the mix:

Throw your wrath, your fury, your ire
To those who destroyed our Earth

But his work, entitled Every Little Helped, ends with just a hint of optimism, the voice from the future warning us that all may not yet be lost:

It’s time to act, to change, to make a better choice,
Or there will be no Earth left at all.

Riyan Siyani, who took second place in the poetry category, imagines how his grandchildren’s generation might look back on the present day:

It is the year 2100,
Nothing is the same, all hope has been squandered
We look back to the year of 2020
And remember how food was aplenty.

The runner-up in the short story category was Adam Liang, who draws out the effects of climate change on nature and on different groups in society, including the young – “babies are crying constantly…children complaining that it’s too hot” – and the old – “the first to go…they wasted and wilted away, just like dead flowers in the wind”.

• Main image above by Tumisu from Pixabay