Our Year 12 Biology students enjoyed a productive fieldtrip to North Norfolk.
Twenty-six of our budding biologists headed to the beautiful sand dunes in Burnham Overy Staithe to unleash their investigative skills.
In a report they wrote about the fieldtrip, students Maia Babraff and Amalia Wicke, said: “We were first split into pairs, and then assigned to one of three teams. Once breaking off into our assigned groups, we began our first activity, which was making perfect scientific drawings of the beach from two perspectives; one from bird’s eye, and one of a singular sand dune plant, with the help of Mrs Pentecost. As expected, nearly everyone chose the easiest option; sea holly, which is basically just a spikey flower.
“As soon as our fine art-worthy drawings were complete (only to biological standards of course!), we continued on to our second task, which was with Mr Lott. We were shown how to correctly use both the point and frame quadrats, in a 100 square metre field that the previous group had kindly marked for us. In pairs, we conducted our own randomised investigations to find the percentage cover of silver fern, and found that it was unsurprisingly quite low. During our observations, a little lizard came to say hi, jumping onto Mr Lott’s data sheet, which got everyone really excited!
“After completing our systematic random sampling practice, we enjoyed a well-deserved lunch break. While we chatted, ate, and/or jumped into sand dunes, Mr Lott and Chris kindly gave up their break to collect sand samples for us to analyse in our upcoming Biology lessons.
“When lunch came to an end, each of the groups went on to their final scientific mission of the day. Our last task was to use a frame quadrat along an interrupted belt transect to measure species and their coverage approximately 150m down the sand dunes. Despite Mr Taylor’s best efforts to help everyone simultaneously, this turned out to be more difficult than expected. It had gotten incredibly windy, and holding down the tape measures down a hill without them flying away was truly a challenge. However, the cold and windy conditions failed to discourage anyone, and we all managed to compile a good table with lots of different species.
“Once we had all finished our work, we gathered one last time to play a game of rounders. The game resulted in a draw between Mr Lott’s and Mr Taylor’s classes. We then packed up all our stuff and made our way back to the buses. The drive back to Ely was full of good music and tired people, and everyone seemed to be happy with the data and experience they had gathered throughout the day. While the weather did not quite fulfil our expectations of a sunny summer day at the beach, we still had fun. We are all very thankful that the Biology Department decided to put up with a pack of slightly chaotic Year 12s once again. We promise, next time we will bring heavier rocks to hold down the tape measures!”