Residential to Preston Montford
On Wednesday 10th July, 57 students (and 5 staff) headed to Preston Montford Field Studies Centre near Shrewsbury for 2 nights. For all students taking GCSE Geography, this residential was important as it helped us to prepare for Paper 3, which makes up 35% of our GCSE.
We set off at roughly 10:00 on our coach for the 1 hour and 30 minute journey. Upon arriving at Preston Montford, the first thing we noticed was the smell, probably a result of the large number of sheep in the area! We had our lunch before heading to Shrewsbury CBD car park to carry out a survey regarding the ‘Park and Ride’ scheme, comparing the number of unoccupied and occupied spaces. Subsequently, the staff produced an average of each group’s figures – 289 unoccupied spaces and 107 occupied spaces. This suggests that the scheme wasn’t very popular and more people didn’t use it compared to those who did. We then travelled to the Town Centre where we carried out surveys at a number of sites. We asked people in the shopping centre several questions to gather more information about the ‘Park and Ride’ scheme to reinforce our knowledge of the scheme and to find out if it was considered to be useful or not. Overall, we found that not many people used the scheme and that the most popular way of transport was by car. Once we had arrived back at the Centre, we wrote down our findings and analysed the data. After we had dinner and had finished our work for the day, we had free time, which, for many people, included playing football against another school.
On Thursday, we switched from human geography to physical geography and took a trip to Carding Mill Valley to climb up hills! This required a lot of energy but we were able to stop a few times to have something to eat and drink. Once we got to our highest point, we retraced our path down but carrying-out measurements, field sketches etc at 8 sites. Our enquiry was to see how features of the river changed. We determined the width, depth and velocity at each river site using different tools such as a hydroprop, an impeller, measuring tape and a ruler. After gathering our results, we headed back to the Centre to write up our results, analyse data and make conclusions related to the enquiry.
Friday was our final day and, after packing our luggage, cleaning the rooms and eating breakfast, we headed back to the classroom to analyse further our surveys and questionnaires. We also presented our findings to the rest of the group. After lunch we boarded our coach for the journey back to school.
We did work hard on the residential, but there was time to relax too; it was a great opportunity to complete our work in a different environment and spend time with our friends. Thanks to Mr Bird for organising the trip for us.
Ibrahim Zaman
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