National Park: Snowdonia 

This afternoon, we built on our knowledge of national parks from previous years by creating an information text about Snowdonia. We researched and explored the key human and physical features of this park and also examined what makes a fantastic national park. 

Examining the Accuracy of Various Map Projections 

During this lesson, we examined various map projections including the Robinson, Wikel Tripel and Mercator projections. It may come as a surprise to hear that there is no truly correct way of representing the earth as a flat image. A world map projection is a visual representation of this challenge using a grid composed of lines of longitude and latitude. We worked in groups to examine each projection and we compared and contrasted each map in order to come to our own conclusions regarding which projection we think to be the most accurate. 

Callum, Class 14: "I think that the Mercator map is the most accurate because we discovered that it was used to navigate the seas by sailors so therefore it must represent an accurate scale of distance between continents."  

North America: Human Features 

This afternoon, we built on our prior knowledge of North America and Europe by researching and presenting information about the key human features of two countries (of our choice) within these continents. We developed our presenting skills by planning the order in which we spoke and we also presented our work to the Geography coordinator to further improve our skills. 

North America: Physical Features 

This afternoon, we used an atlas to annotate a map of North America (naming the countries, oceans, major rivers and capitals).  

Developing our Knowledge of Time Zones 

During this lesson, we recapped on our knowledge of how the world has many different time zones. After that, we used the world map and we applied our mathematical skills to our work in order to answer a variety of time-based questions.

Mineral and Energy Distribution

During this lesson, we compared and contrasted the mineral and energy distribution in North and South America by observing the keys on the two maps and discussing the geographical links between location and natural resources.  

Lacey, Class 13: 'Gold is mass produced in both continents; however, as a result of the climate in South America, coal is less common compared to that of North America.' 

Food Production and Distribution 

After comparing mineral and energy consumption in North and South America, we went on to analyse various sources to compare food production and distribution in order to determine if this has any link with the availability of natural resources (e.g. coal) from the last lesson.  

Luke, Class 13: 'I was shocked to discover that 30% of all food is wasted annually. This is horrific if we consider that there are people in the world who are starving.'

Case Study: The Cape Town Water Crisis

During this lesson, we explored the case study pertaining to the water crisis in Cape Town in 2017. We read the text provided and answered the questions regarding this crisis. We also considered how we could help to reduce our water wastage in our daily lives.