Hi everyone! On 19.8.14, two days into my holiday in Fuerteventura (Canaries) my son James and I walked from our accommodation at Oasis Dunas to the hotel of Dunas Caleta to join up with a walking party and we climbed a long way up an old inactive volcanic mountain. During various stages of our ascent, our tour guide, Gary, talked to us about volcanoes and earthquakes and plate-tectonics. I attach a link from the Friends of Dunas Caleta (Dunas Alisios) where I have taken photographs of our excursion and a few videos from my mobile phone as follows:- https://facebook/groups/377075522306909/ Im afraid you will have to scroll down quite a way to locate these videos and photographs. While Gary was talking, my mind went back to my Geography lessons where two of my teachers spoke about the above issues. The first of these teachers was Mr Bye, who was my Geography Teacher from MT79 – ET81. Apart from the Geography Field Trip 30.10.79, covered in a previous thread, Mr Bye would always get us to watch TV programmes on various geographical features in the room in which I played chess at lunchtimes (between the canteen and the small hall). There was a TV and on 16.10.79, Mr Bye uploaded a video on volcanoes and earthquakes and you will see from the first two attachments, a 2 page essay write up. Other videos were about the USA (New York, Manhattan, California and North Dakota), Japan (Tokyo and Hiroshima), Finland and Norway, The Zuider Zee (Netherlands), Iceland, the three courses of the River Tees (from waterfall to estuary), coastal features such as how the spit at Orford Ness was formed and industrial estates such as coal mining and steel. As a little aside I remember during one of these sessions, on 21.7.81 after Mr Bye had turned the telly on but before he loaded the video, the famous Headingley Test Match was on and England had been following on but managed to set Australia a target of 130 to win. We saw that Australia were 59-4 so it did raise my hopes a bit. These hopes were to be realised later on in the day – that afternoon we were scheduled to go on an Induction Afternoon to visit the Upper School as we were very soon to break up for the summer holidays and were about to move into Year 10 to study for our OLevels and CSEs. This included a session in the Upper School Assembly Hall listening to Dr Hunter giving us a talk about what to expect in the Upper School and who were going to be our form teachers – just like Ma Barrett did in July 78. It was while Dr Hunter was droning on, that one student whispered to another student that England had won the test match. As we were on our way to see Mrs Sud, I asked the student who found out how many runs we had won by and he said – 18. Wheew that was close! Going back to the subject in hand, I ended up getting 46% in my geography summer exam and ended up in 4G6 which was a CSE group and my teacher was Mr Hodgkins. As well as the geography field trips in connection with my CSE projects he went over what Mr Bye taught us only in a little more depth. Our first session with Mr Hodgkins on 4.9.81 was about the water cycle and we learned a new English word in our vocabulary – precipitation (meaning rain, snow or hail). He then went on to talk about how this precipitation formed rivers and then went on to talk about relief and drainage in relation to these rivers. The next thing he talked about was map features and then he gave us another interesting English word to learn – plate-tectonics. These plate-tectonics led to volcanoes and earthquakes as you will see from the attached illustrations. After that Mr Hodgkins talked in depth about coastlines, glaciers, oceans, forests, deserts, time zones and what is a tundra climate (e.g what its like north of the Arctic Circle such as Northern Canada and Northern Russia where temperatures could get as low as -40 degrees Celsius – brrrr!). He also went over world products and gave us a test on them on 21.5.82 a month before our Year 10 exams in which I got 14.5 out of 23 (see attachment). After we moved into Year 11, the fate of Mr Hodgkins was discussed and covered in a previous thread. I will be picking up the story of what happened before Mr Bye became my Geography teacher and after Mr Hodgkins departure when I talk about Mike Knights (former Headmaster of the Lower School and geography teacher) in another thread.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 15:00:49 +0000
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