A Level Geography Skills for Independent Investigations at Blencathra (Small Group Course)

This course provides an opportunity for schools with low student numbers to prepare and plan for their individual Non-Exam Assessment for A Level Geography.

Blencathra Field Centre is situated 300m up, on the south facing slopes of Blencathra in the Lake District National Park. It sits just one mile outside the Lakeland village of Threlkeld, with panoramic views of the Lake District fells. This impressive setting has a true sense of space, giving the site a unique quality, which many visitors enjoy year after year.

Small Group or Individual Student Days are designed to bring together individual students, home educated students, schools with small cohorts, or students who were unable to attend a residential or alternative trip. By bringing groups together you do not have to pay for a minimum number of students.

These courses are for groups of 9 or fewer students from any one school.

To ensure the safety of all participants on our day and residential small groups courses, any child, or group of children from an individual school or home-education group, aged under 18 years must be accompanied by a responsible adult, eg teacher or parent. Other adult learners eg mature students or those who have recently turned 18 are welcome to join the course.

The price of the course includes

Accommodation in shared rooms (single rooms for adults where available but cannot be guaranteed
Food from dinner on day 1 to packed lunch on day 3
In-course transport to fieldwork sites during the course
All course teaching
Equipment, wellies and waterproofs if required.
Accompanying staff and adults are charged at half the student rate plus VAT.

Students studying a river for A Level Biology

Example Timetable

Groups arrive around 12:30.
Introduction to the centre.
(Please bring your own packed lunch on the first day.)

Day 1

Afternoon

Exploring place

will be spent in the Lake District town of Keswick. Students will explore fieldwork methods that can be used to investigate may aspects of place including sense of place, place identity, inequality, rebranding and regeneration.

Day 2

Glacial processes and landforms

Students will take the classic walk from Grasmere to the corrie at Easedale Tarn. Along the way they will interpret classic erosional and depositional landforms including, roche moutonnées, striations, hanging valleys, moraines and corries.

The day will follow the enquiry processes and along the walk students will collect orientation data from landforms indicating ice flow direction which will be analysed and mapped on return to the centre.

Day 3

Morning

Water and carbon fieldwork skills

Students will spend the morning developing fieldwork skills to measure the water and carbon cycles for their own NEA. This includes measuring interception, recording land use, and calculating the carbon content of trees and soil.

Course finishes at 12:30

A typical day at Blencathra:

We make the most of your time whilst at the centre. Your course will include up to 8 hours 45 minutes of contact time with your tutor. Whilst exact timings will vary depending on weather, pace, individual, a typical day would normally involve activities starting at 9.15am. On return to the centre in the afternoon, students will have a break and complete fieldwork follow up.