Blog » Humanities & PE
17 Nov 2009 Renewable an non-renewable resources
The Humanities GCSE students in Year 9 are looking at renewable an non-renewable sources of energy.
As our planet becomes more industrialised, the demand for energy is increasing. Most of the energy we use comes from non-renewable sources. These sources of energy have helped us to bring about the huge advances in our way of life over the last two hundred years. But there are problems. Once we use them up, no more will be created. We all also know that the most widely used fuels cause pollution.
The fossil fuels on which we have come to depend are cheap and our technology and way of life has become utterly dependant on them. What can we do though, now we know they are fast running out?
This site from Manchester University deals with these questions.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
22 Oct 2009 Overexploitation of natural resources
Students have just looked at human overexploitation of natural resources and the consequences this has had on an environment and marine species.
The Aral Sea was once the fourth biggest inland sea in the world. Fishing and a busy shipping trade provided a healthy livelihood for several hundred thousand people. The Aral Sea surface was 66,100 km2 (25,520 square miles). Salt content was one per cent. Then, in the 1960s, the flow of water into the sea began to drop alarmingly. The Soviet government had set up a major irrigation scheme in order to grow huge amounts of rice and cotton to help the Russian economy. This scheme involved diverting water from the rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea to areas where the rice and cotton were planted. This irrigation scheme sucked out more than 90 per cent of the natural flow of water into the sea. As a result, 27,000 km2 (10,425 square miles) of former sea bottom became dry surface. About 60 per cent of water volume was lost. The sea level fell 14 metres. The water became twice as salty. Every year, about 200,000 tonnes of salt and sand are being carried away by wind.
This video shows what has happened to the way of life of some people in the region.
The second case study they looked at was overfishing.
If you want to investigate this idea further, two good websites to use are the Greenpeace site, and Pepijn Koster's overfishing.org.
For homework, students have been asked to create a newspaper front page on the subject of overfishing. They can download the PowerPoint and the Publisher document needed for this from the Humanities GCSE section in the faculty pages.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
24 Sep 2009 Too many people?
What does population mean? In Geography it usually means the number of people that live in a specific place, although you can talk about the population of any kind of plant, animal or non living thing.
In year 8 we have been thinking about population. We have discovered that the worlds population has grown very rapidly in the last hundred years.
This has all kinds of consequences for people on the planet. Where once people could mess up their surroundings, move on and leave the place to recover, now we are messing up our surroundings (or environment) on a global scale, and we cant just move to another planet!
Since the late 1960s concerned individuals and groups called environmentalists have been finding out what problems we are all causing, and trying to persuade people to do something about it.
This advert first appeared on American TV in the early 1970s. What do you think it says about different cultures and their attitude to the environment?
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Posted By: Mr Golden
9 Jul 2009 CCTV - good or bad?
Some Year 8 students have been looking at the Geography of crime. Today they investigated the use of CCTV cameras in crime prevention. In the UK there is one CCTV camera for every fourteen people. We can be recorded going about our business hundreds of times a day. Most other countries find this very strange. We have many more times the number of CCTV cameras in the UK than the rest of Europe put together. Denmark and Austria have none.
Most British people like having CCTV cameras. This film is a recent report from the USA on a scheme in Middlesbrough that involved CCTV cameras that tell people off!
8D1 homework: Watch the video above again. Listen to why people are for and against CCTV.
Now watch the video below.
Question: Would you like CCTV cameras watching the street where you live? Give two reasons for having it and two reasons against having it, then give your opinion. Write your answers in the 'comments' box on this page. Write your first name (and give an initial if you are called Reneé!) I will post the best answers, but you all have to submit some!
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Posted By: Mr Golden
1 Jul 2009 Getting to school
At primary school, most students carry out a survey to find out how their class gets to school. We have just done something similar in Year 7, but we wanted to investigate the idea of travelling to school further.
We discovered that whilst the majority of students walked to school just a year ago, in secondary school most students catch a bus or are driven to the gates. Is this really a green, or sustainable way to live? Our class realised that the reason for this difference was that primary schools tend to be smaller and more local, whereas secondary schools are larger, and for most students, much further away. Perhaps in the future, if we want our transport to be more sustainable, secondary schools should also be smaller and take students from a local catchment. Can you think of any problems this might bring?
For their homework, some students are looking at the journeys students in other countries need to make to school. They are then coming up with a form of transport suitable to their particular environment and also as green as possible.
Here are some pictures from the places they are thinking about:
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| Bangladesh | Finland |
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| Niger | Peru |
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Posted By: Mr Golden
10 Mar 2009 Atomic Opera!
I wonder how many of you have ever watched or listened to an opera. I wouldn't second guess you. Perhaps some of you have. What I am sure of though, is that right now you may be mentally holding one hand over your chest, whilst with your other arm outstretched and jaw wide open, you are letting out a ridiculous "Ahhhhhhhhhh".
That's what many members of my form, 8.4 did when I said we were going to watch a clip from "Peter Grimes". Do you know what? They really liked it.
Like most grown up art forms, opera can take a bit of time and effort to get to understand, but the end result is certainly worth the struggle... if that's what it is. You open the doors to a whole world of music, drama and emotion beyond anything you have ever experienced, or even imagined.
This Saturday I went to see the English National Opera production of a fairly new piece by the leading American composer, John Adams. (yes, operas are being written right now!) "Doctor Atomic" depicts two days before the test detonation of the worlds first atom bomb in the dying days of WWII. The scientist in charge of this project, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the 'Doctor' of the title and the opera deals with the moral and political dilemmas felt by those involved in this project.
Here is Gerald Finley, the man for whom Adams wrote the role of Oppenheimer, singing the aria (song within an opera) that ends Act I. It is a setting of the Holy Sonnet XIV, by John Donne.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
26 Feb 2009 Migration from Mexico to the USA
The USA are taking steps to combat migration from Mexico, but Mexicans are still trying to cross the border. This is due to a combination of 'Push Factors' and 'Pull Factors'. This film talks about recent efforts to limit cross border migration.
Some year 8 Students have been writing reports on these factors and investigating for themselves just why so many Mexicans try to make the journey each day. They have found out that mexican migrants actually bring a number of benefits to the USA economy!
Here is the information for the homework I set. I have made it into i-paper. Play around with the controls at the top. The drop down arrow lets you zoom in and out. Choose the + symbol.
You can find the PowerPoint on the Geography page, under FACULTY PAGES.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
13 Jan 2009 Year 7 weather map
Year seven have been learning some good PowerPoint skills, in order to produce a map showing the main climatic regions of the UK.
For their homework, they need to place the four boxes we created describing the four main regions in the correct quarter of the map, print it off and bring it to their next lesson.
Use the "add a comment" facility if you need any help!
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Posted By: Mr Golden
12 Jan 2009 WWI - Why were there trenches?
9D2 have been looking at how a simple invention that enabled cattle farmers in 19th century America to contain large herds, at little expense, was instrumental in causing WWI to rapidly descend into the grueling attrition of trench warfare.
Afreca guessed we were talking about barbed wire and Ali even knew how counteracting this obstacle to troop advances inspired the invention of the modern tank.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
7 Jan 2009 The rainforest Kayapo
This week, year 9 and year 8 students have been looking at how the destruction of parts of the Amazon rainforest threatened the way of life of the Kayapo people. We found out how the Kayapo first fought off miners and loggers, then ran a successful campaign to stop the Brazilian government flooding much of their land with an HEP station. Sylvester impressed everyone by knowing that bauxite is the ore from which we get aluminium.
If you want to look at some good images showing the destruction of the rainforest and read some more about this subject, follow this link.
For more information on campaigns to help preserve the region for its indigenous people, click here and here.
To see an interesting news report, click here.
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Posted By: Mr Golden
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