This blog is written by James Speed. James teaches A Level and GCSE Geology, and throughout the Covid lockdown was homeschooling his nine-year old daughter. Get in touch with James on Twitter @JamesSpeed4
We all know that the end of any school year must involve a field trip, and I certainly felt that homeschool should include one as well. So at the end of what I considered a varied and in depth curriculum (which admittedly did include a lot of PE, primarily football and cricket, both in terms of participation and watching elite level events in order to learn new skills) a field trip to Castleton was just what both pupils and staff required; a reward for all the hard work over the last 14 weeks.
I had not realised just how difficult the curriculum is for nine-year olds. I didn’t (and still don’t really) know what a frontal adverb is? To me it just sounds like part of the brain. I also encountered some difficulty in a mathematical problem that I was only able to solve using simultaneous equations. I assume that these are not part of the key stage two national curriculum (although I’m sure that the education minister at the time of the curriculum rewrite would have loved to included them), so I can only assume that there was a simpler solution to the problem. At least I now fully understand the bus stop method of long division, which is very different to how I was taught it. Back in 1984 I can still recall my teacher Mr. Allsop having a huge circle of numbers on the wall above his desk. Every day without fail he would instruct us to go around the wheel dividing each number by 13, multiplying each number by 2.4, or some other variant of this task. While we beavered away at these calculations, he would read the Daily Telegraph from cover to cover. I’d love to know what OFSTED would make of this student centered, individual, differentiated learning activity!
The day of our field trip arrived and my nine-year old daughter was very excited about going down a cave and looking for our own crystals and fossils. In the true tradition of field trips it was of course raining in July, so with our waterproofs packed we set off for Treak Cliff Cavern which was offering self guided tours. Upon arrival we spotted some fossils in the car park that enabled me to introduce the principal of uniformitarianism by considering where corals form today, what Derbyshire is like today and therefore what Derbyshire must have been like in the past. Once we’d established that not even Grandad was 300 million years old our fingernails acted as an analogy as to how fast the Earth’s plates moved. I was impressed how much my daughter already knew about Earthquakes and Volcanoes, there is clearly a lot of Earth Science in the primary curriculum and as Earth Scientists we need to tap into this rich seam if we are to reverse declining numbers at key stage 5 and at degree level.
The tour involved downloading an app, which then played a recorded explanation at different locations throughout the cave. This proved that learning is indeed a life long journey, as I recalled an undergraduate trip to Treak Cliff where we were shown some oily limestone and told that this oil was responsible for the unique Blue John fluorite; however it now appears that the colour is due to radioactive processes inside the crystal lattice. My daughter was fascinated with the minerals, fossils, stalagmites and stalactites which enabled us to discuss climate change. It was interesting to know that the primary school curriculum clearly covers global warming but doesn’t cover global cooling as my daughter just thought that the ice age only existed in films.
James’ nine-year old daughter in the Treak Cliff Cavern at Castleton
Once we’d enjoyed our fantastic cavern tour we had lunch in the car before heading for Pindale (an abandoned lead mine a few miles east of Castleton). My daughter was delighted to hear that she could take anything she found as we were just looking at the waste dumps that the lead miners didn’t want. This also enabled us to discuss mineral extraction and the effect that it has on the environment. Once she had discovered how many of her essential items come from things dug out of the ground she was in complete favour of mining. Maybe this is another angle with which to introduce Earth Science to primary school pupils. We found some beautiful calcite crystals, galena, barite and fluorite as well as crinoids, brachiopods and corals which my daughter has taken home and currently have pride of place in her bedroom.
Crinoids in the Treak Cliff Cavern
The trip was a success, both in academic and pastoral terms, but I must let on that it is a trip that I have done before. For the past 4 years I have taken a group of Y5 pupils on this same trip (and intend to take the pupils who have missed out this year in October). The pupils that first went on the trip will be choosing their GCSE options in the next academic year and it will be interesting to see if any of them choose Geology. I can certainly vouch for the impact of extra-curricular geology trips on A level recruitment; a number of my current A level students were members of my Y7 Geology Club, which involves a trip to Whitby to look for fossils and have fish and chips (fortunately I managed to squeeze this year’s trip in before lockdown). If we are to ensure that there are future Earth Scientists all of us need to do some outreach with younger students.