The postcard display is now complete and in the main Humanities area, thanks to all staff and students that contributed, Mrs Marston and her gang for putting it together, who ever thought coloured string could be so exciting, and Alan for the original idea. 
I have completed a statistical analysis of our travels which I’ll post over the weekend, sorry I left it on my desk tonight! 
For the majority of my group their Coca-Cola coursework needs to be handed in on Monday, please see check your College email for an important message with regards to this work.
As the College prepares for open day, some of you may have seen my new display outside the new Humanities computer room, a good resource for your new topic, coping with floods, which we start on Monday…. quick coursework turn around on this one…. two weeks of background information before your first piece. Remember Year 11 is worth 50% of your course.
Apologises to my second Year Ten group if you are reading this before Thursday and Friday, but it won’t do any harm…
By now we should understand what the Antarctica Convergence is, also known as the Polar Front, and the reason for its development. Cold heavy waters from the Antarctic travel northwards along the seabed, until they reach warmer waters travelling southward. The cold waters force the warmer waters to the surface, resulting in an uplift of nutrients and an increase in biodiversity within this boundary. The Antarctica Convergence ,at 60 Degrees South, represents the beginning of the Southern Ocean, which is distinctive from the surrounding oceans, in chemical composition and biodiversity. Remember that this boundary is around 40km in width and has maintained itself for the last 20 million years…. The convergence has been somewhat effective in discouraging larger mammals and fish colonising ocean, one reason why our penguin friends live happily.
Thanks to Alan, who pointed me in the direction of this great video, well worth spending the ten minutes to view,useful for year 9 and their next topic, coasts.
Thanks to Alan, who pointed me in the direction of this great video, well worth spending the ten minutes to view,useful for year 11 and their next topic, coping with floods.
I’m having a bit of blog guilt at the moment, sorry year ten. I’m just about finding my feet now. Let me know how you are finding the course so far…
Where are we at?
By now we should understand that an extreme environment is one that exhibits challenging environmental conditions, such as landscape and climate, that make it uncomfortable for human to live.
Our case study is Antarctica, Mr Parkinson, also known as Alan at KES (Check out his blog) study another polar environment, that of Svalbard, in the north, so it’s well worth a read to see how the two environments compare.
We should also now have a general grasp of how we perceived extreme environments in the past and how our perceptions have changed, if they have! Remember that our perceptions of the environments may have changed, but the environmental conditions continue to endure. As someone stated nicely, technology has allowed us somewhat to master these environments.
We’ll consider our perceptions of Antarctica and how they have changed later this week.
We should also now be able to ‘place’ Antarctica and name some of the physical and human features of the continent. It won’t ask you to do this in the exam, but you will need knowledge of specific locations and the geographical processes that take place in these areas, something we’ll look at later in the half-term.
An important aspect here is to consider the resources we have used to investigate our extreme environment…. it may ask you this in the exam.
Music, Vaughan Williams ‘Antarctica’.
Spoken and Written word, Michael Palin, ‘Pole to Pole’.
Various images.
Google Earth.
and many more to come…
Each of these resources tell us something about what the environment is like…
This week we’ll get into some of the physical processes taking place in Antarctica, including one that may have an impact in the future….
Whilst your waiting, have a go at this just a minute game, that we used as a starter in class, can you do any better? Let me know 
Nice revision for Year 11 as well, but they should be finishing their coursework.
For Year 11′s completing their Coca-Cola coursework. Final hand in date is this coming Monday, 24th of September, with the exception of the holiday boys, whom have a week extension. Please make sure that your work fulfills all the requirements and that you include a bibliography. Check on the People as Consumers blog page for further details. If you need assistance, you know where to contact me.
Best of luck.
Year Ten have now been introduced to the underpinning concepts of the course, you can have another go at the match-up quiz we did in class as a starter, seeing as our first attempt was interesting. Year 11, this would be a useful revision exercise.
We’ll be looking at the challenges of this and the reasons why people are so interested in the environment in future lessons… in the meantime, a taster.
I’ve now produced a people as consumers page for the Year.11 coursework. You will be in computer rooms over the next two weeks, so please listen out in briefing for your room changes, also remember to bring your work! If you have found any useful links, please email them to me and I’ll add them to the page. Good luck…
