Croatian students visit Shotton Hall

Date Published:: Thursday 16 February 2017

Students at the Academy were recently treated to a visit from Osnovna Scola Podrute School from Croatia as part of our ongoing involvement with the British Council's Erasmus international schools work.

Students from both schools went on a field trip to Malham in North Yorkshire for four days to study land usage in the National Park.

During the week everyone learned about the chemistry of limestone and how it is created, discovering how water dissolves this limestone to forge caves, grikes and clints. They also did field sketches and took annotated photos of U shaped and V shaped valleys and learned how they are created which is through glaciation and rivers.

After getting their hands dirty outside, they then studied the impact tourism has on the national park and learned about the trade off between attracting and sustaining tourism and protecting the environment.

The visited a quarry and learned about the impact quarrying has on the environment as well as the economic benefits and about the civil engineering aspects of building roads and runways including how much rock is needed and the cost per km of a road.

Finally everyone undertook some biomass analysis catching small mammals and using statistical methods to estimate mouse, vole and shrew populations.

Although lessons and field work continued until eight o'clock every night there were still plenty of fun activities squeezed in including team challenge games, blindfolded orienteering, building woodland shelters, lighting fires with moss and twigs and toasting marshmallows in the snow.

All the students will meet again in Croatia next year as they repeat the study and contrast it with the Plitivice National Park.

Shotton Hall Erasmus