GEOGRAPHY The Geography Department has completed another successful year of making Christ’s College students more aware of their environment. In our Year 9 classes, taught by Neil Nicholson and Peter Cooper, the boys were taught a range of geographic skills, including map interpretation and graphing techniques. Topics studied include: migration and the contentious issues that inevitably accompany the movement of people; extreme events such as tropical cyclones and the way global warming is making such events more prevalent; and analysing contemporary geographic issues that feature in the media. During Term 3 the boys spent a day in Lyttelton, gathering information to construct computer-based land-use maps of the town as part of a research assignment. Year 10 classes, taught by Neil Porter and Peter Cooper, have extended
their skills to include drawing and interpreting climographs, flood hydrographs, population pyramids, scatter graphs, weather maps and choropleth maps. Population geography was one of our major topics, with development models applied and the causes and solutions to world differences discussed. The second major topic of study was fluvial (river) processes and landforms. The stream table in room W202 allowed the boys to create river landforms at a very small scale and then change flow rates to see how the landforms respond. A field trip to the Selwyn River concluded their study of rivers. We followed the river from where it emerges from the foothills at Whitecliffs, all the way across the plains to Lake Ellesmere, with measurements and observations made about river discharge, sediment size and land use along the river. This year, the Year 11 class was kept busy with three NCEA internal assessments and preparation for the three external standards. Throughout
the year geographic skills have been taught and reinforced. The Christchurch earthquakes formed our main case study for the standard on natural hazards and New Zealand was studied as the main case study for the population paper. The geographic issue we studied this year was the control of possums in our forests. A trip to Hanmer Springs gave the boys the opportunity to gather information related to change brought about by tourism in the town. In Term 1, the Year 12 boys focused on preparing background information and field surveying skills for the four- day trip to the Mt Cheeseman Forest Lodge in the Craigieburn Range. This field trip is very important in our year’s work as it addresses three assessment standards – geographic research, the issue of wilding pines in the high country, and the end of year external standard on a natural environment. Working in small groups, the boys measured and recorded aspects of the weather, vegetation, soils and landforms at a range of sites, from the top of Mt Cockayne (1874m) down to the Craigieburn Basin floor. The patterns revealed by the data formed the basis of their research findings. Internally assessed standards also included the patterns of murder in Chicago as an urban study and the patterns of malaria around the globe. The Year 13 students studied three externally assessed standards. In Term 1, the boys looked at the process of tourism development, and in Queenstown in particular. Early in Term 2 the class undertook some local surveying of tourists to complete a research assignment of their own design on an aspect of tourism in Christchurch. Our second major topic was coastal processes along the southern part of Pegasus Bay. Some time was spent studying wave motion and the hydraulic processes shifting and shaping our coastline. The force of wind is also an important factor on our coast, both in eroding and building up landforms such as sand dunes. A field trip to Taylor’s Mistake and New Brighton
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Christ’s College Canterbury
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