Earlier this year we took a number of Year 9 students to London Zoo for a workshop on the effects of climate change on animal populations and all of our A level Biologists attend a four-day residential field course, currently at Box Hill in Surrey, where they gain hands-on experience of practical ecology. ‘The day at the zoo was fun and relaxing whilst being informative. I was surprised to learn that the sex of turtles depends on the temperature the eggs are incubated at; below 30 degrees they’re all males, above 30 degrees, all females!’ Charlie Luckhurst, Year 9
follows a similar expedition to Madagascar in 2014 where boys were involved in surveying populations of lemurs, chameleons and other endemic wildlife. Within the past year we have also welcomed a wide range of high profile speakers to the department, including dermatologist Professor Chris Watkins OA, chimpanzee behaviour expert Nigel Wrangham, and stem cell scientist Professor David Tosh from the Centre for Regenerative Medicine in Bath. Just this week we hosted a talk by Dr Pria Ghosh on the chytrid fungus pandemic which is decimating the world’s amphibian populations. We have had success in a number of national competitions, including four gold medals and two silver medals in the Biology Olympiad this year, our best results ever. Adam Sheriff in Year 13 won the prestigious Medicine Essay Competition run by Robinson College, Cambridge for his essay entitled Action is Reaction and Andrzej Fanner Brzezina, also in Year 13, was runner-up in the equally prestigious Corpus Christi, Cambridge Essay Competition for his essay Evolution: Fact or Fiction. We are very much of the opinion that ‘out of classroom’ learning experiences play a vital role in nurturing the enthusiasm and interest of our students. As such, they are an important adjunct to our delivery of the Biology curriculum.
Close encounter with a Komodo dragon.
This summer, 23 Upper School boys went on an Operation Wallacea expedition to Sulawesi, Indonesia. where they worked alongside conservation scientists, gathering data on a variety of animals which will be used to help the preservation of the country’s unique natural heritage. ‘At the Wellcome Collection museum we saw all things weird and wonderful and we were lucky enough to see the tigers being
fed at the zoo.’ Matthew Gibson, Year 9
The highlight of this trip was a visit to the island of Komodo to see the famous ‘dragons’ in the wild. This
Getting to grips with preservation on the Indonesia trip.
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