On Thursday 20th June, Year 7 travelled to the Epping Forest Field Centre, High Beech. The centre provides students with the opportunity to apply their geographical and scientific knowledge and skills to the natural world.
Our day began in the classroom with a safety talk. We then grabbed our clipboards and headed out into the forest. Our first investigation was to determine how people use the forest. We recorded those people and vehicles that past us, over a period of 5 minutes. We saw people walking their dogs, running, riding their bicycles and lots of people passing through in their vehicles. We were shocked just how busy this part of the forest was so early in the morning. We moved on to carrying out a bi-polar environmental quality survey to determine the impact of humans on this piece of land. We made judgements on litter, noise, vandalism, erosion and development. Our main morning task was working in smaller groups to investigate the effect on a footpath on soil and vegetation growth. Using a ruler, soil pin, tape measure and quadrat we measure soil compaction, height of vegetation and presence of exposed soil. As we were making our field sketches the ice cream truck drew up. Rather fortuitous. Mrs R-S managed to barter him down to a suitable price and we trundled back to the centre slurping on our ices cream… with a flake! After lunch we revisited compass directions before being split into groups to orienteer through the forest.