Is refuge worth the risk?
The final expedition for our Year 8 students in 2016 was called, “Stormy seas, toil and tempest”.
The Learning Targets were:
- I can use and apply geographical data to a real life context
- I can examine the issue of international migration between Africa and Europe
- I can consider a range of themes and how they are presented in a text
- I can interpret evidence from the text and apply it to new contexts
Students studied how and why migrants move from North Africa into Europe, the risks they take in doing so, with the backdrop of Shakespeare’s The Tempest linking the ideas of sea travel and different geographical landscape.
There was a short fieldwork experience on the hills at the Lakeside in the first week, followed by a day’s fieldwork on the hills in the Peak District. This was to firmly embed the idea of contours and the shape of hills and landscape with the students. Our expert was Kate ap Harri, who brought a Shelter Box from the Rotary Club to show students how little a person can cope with when arriving in a foreign land, with the aim of creating understanding and empathy.
The expedition culminated with a Presentation of Learning where students showed their 3D topographical map, with extracts from a first person narrative as a migrant, and comments on the setting and island where The Tempest is located, in the last week of the Summer Term.
Final Product – Development of Map