June is National Festival of Fieldwork month, so this was the perfect time for our Year 10 students to undertake some coastal fieldwork.

On Monday 17th June, we went on our IGCSE Geography field trip to the sunny Cuckmere Haven and Seaford, on the Sussex Coast, to learn many new skills and develop our understanding of our investigation. It was a great experience as it helped us apply our previous knowledge from our class work to the practical work we did. We worked in groups to take sediment samples, measured the beach profile and annotated old photos, allowing us to gain a greater understanding of our Geography course and to come to our own key conclusions. This was followed by a hike over the Seven Sisters which was very beautiful despite it being quite tiring to walk over! After our hard work throughout the day, we finished with some well-deserved ice creams before heading back to school.

Thank you very much to the Geography department and the teachers who took us for a great trip, helped by the sunny weather!

Phoebe & Isobel, Year 10

Fieldwork is an essential part of a geographical education as well as being a National Curriculum, GCSE and A Level requirement. It enables young people to develop their subject knowledge, gain a range of skills that are difficult to develop in the classroom and helps them to understand the ‘messiness’ of geographical reality.

The National Festival of Fieldwork provides an opportunity to take our classes out to investigate, observe, discover, challenge, test out ideas and gain a deeper and wider understanding of the world around them. – Geographical Association website