There has been so little fieldwork in the last two years due to the pandemic. New teachers may have very limited experience in this area and those supporting RQTs and ECTs will be thinking about to to support them. I therefore thought it might be useful to share how my department approaches fieldwork.
Planning fieldwork
We are asked to book dates into our school calendar in the summer before the new school year starts. We submit dates, then the admin staff contact us to sort out any issues and clashes. It is important that there aren’t too many staff booked out on one day to make sure cover is manageable.
Our choice of fieldwork dates is affected by our curriculum, seasons and whole school policy. We only take sixth form groups out in Sept/Oct as our school policy is to minimise disruptions to the curriculum during this period so students get a settled start to the year – I think this is a really good approach. We only carry out KS3&4 physical geography fieldwork in the summer to maximise chances of good weather. Our fieldwork is an important part of our curriculum, so the days out are planned as part of our sequence of learning.
A couple of months before the fieldwork date we will swing into action on the admin side of the planning, with Karen taking the lead and teachers who are new to fieldwork shadowing and assisting to develop their confidence. The only cost involved in our fieldwork is transport, so we find out how much this will cost, ringing around for quotes if we are using coach companies (we sometimes use the school minibus or the train), then make bookings through our Trust finance team. The finance team also set up a payment option on our school site (we invite carers to make a voluntary contribution); we also speak to our pupil premium coordiantor to check arrangements for this funding. Letters go out to students with information about the visit and teachers talk through the information with their classes, answering questions they have. Spare copies of letters are left in student reception as some students will inevitably lose theirs and the letter is put on the school website. We also fill in the online booking sheets to request cover for our classes. To minimise teacher cover we often take a schools direct trainee or a non-teaching member of staff alongside geography teachers.
Some students may be particularly anxious about fieldwork. Teachers identify students and we also talk to our learning support department, then we can do ‘talk about’ sessions with small groups of students to go through the plans and answer their questions. We often call parents of students with specific needs to discuss how we can best meet the student’s needs and how we can make the day a really good one for them. Our learning support department is fantastic and when needed we are able to take learning support assistants out to support specific students.
Our schemes of learning are written with the fieldwork embedded – here is the example of our yr 10 Urban Challenges scheme of learning, which ends with fieldwork in Bristol investigating ‘Is the regeneration of Temple Quarter sustainable?’. We test this using some of the elements of the Egan Wheel – https://www.ihbc.org.uk/recent_papers/docs/Egan%20Review%20Skills%20for%20sustainable%20Communities.pdf (see page 19 for diagram of the wheel).
It is important to make the process of geographical enquiry really explicit to students – this document is targetted at A level students, but is a great overview for teachers https://www.geography.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Support%20and%20guidance/Geographical_investigations_split_to_A4.01.pdf
As the fieldwork date approaches we check who has permission to go on the visit and liase with pastoral teams and parents/carers to get as many students to participate in the visit as possible. This involves making a lot of phone calls, so we split them between our whole team, not just the teachers of the classes. We also put details of the visit in our school’s daily brief e-newsletter in advance so teachers know who will be out of lessons and when. We contact our school kitchen to make sure free school meals will be available for students entitled to them to pick up on the morning of the visit – students bring their own containers to put them in. We give our safeguarding deputy a list of students going on the visit and she emails back with a list of things to look out for – she will speak to us about any particularly serious concerns. We also check the medical conditions of the students (and photo permissions) and book first aid boxes and a school mobile phone to take with us. The sheets for the visit are put in for photocopying – it is a good idea to keep these really simple – here is the one for our year 10 Bristol visit. We have also used mobile phones for collecting data using Google Forms at times.
On the day
It is fine to feel nervous as well as excited on the day of the fieldwork! We always meet our students in a designated place (often the lecture theatre) after tutor time so that we can see our own tutor groups as normal. We start by reminding them of the purpose of the day – our enquiry questions – and of expectations, then head to our transport. Our students are given the choice of wearing their usual school uniform or their PE uniform for geography fieldwork. We register the students again, making a photocopy to drop into the attendance office and taking the other list with us.
I advise being really positive with students when you talk to them at the start of the day – don’t go through a big list of don’ts and let your own enthusiasm for fieldwork shine through! You can remind students of expectations in a positive way i.e. ‘I know you are going to be a pleasure to spend the day with. We are likely to come across members of the public, so make sure you always move out of the way for them and are friendly – I know you are lovely, but others might be intimidated by a big group of teens.’
Although we ask students to bring a pen there will be some who don’t, so I always have a supply in my backpack. It is also a good idea to take sheets for those that ‘lose’ them! When we have a trainee or a non-teaching staff member with us I often ask them to fill out a sheet as we go along so we have a master copy to use if students miss the fieldwork or lose their own.
Whilst on the fieldvisit it is important to do what you can to make students day as productive and enjoyable as possible. Make sure you flag up opportunities for students to use the toilets, buy drinks etc (info on supporting students on periods etc can be found here – https://geogmum.wordpress.com/2022/01/03/how-can-we-make-geography-fieldwork-more-inclusive-part-1/ On recent fieldwork I noticed that our students were much less confident when we gave them free time for breaks and lunch – they needed guidance about where to go and what to go, whereas pre-COVID students would just vanish off. Give students clear instructions about tasks, meeting times etc and ask them to repeat them back to you to check they have taken them in. It is a good idea to get them to set alarms on their phones for important meeting times.
We think ahead about which students are at risk of being left out on visits and try to put them with friends, but it is also important to look out for this on the day. We keep circulating among the students all day, praising their work and chatting about allsorts – it is a great opportunity to build positive relationships. Encourage students to take photographs of the memories they are making with their friends. We always take photographs to share on our department Twitter. Fieldwork is also an amazing opportunity to get students to apply what they have learnt in lessons to the real world – keep talking to them and asking questions. It is also good to ask them to evaluate their fieldwork methods whilst out and about – it will make more sense then.
It is also important to work with new members of staff to develop their confidence during fieldwork. Talk about what you do and why you are doing it. Give them opportunities to lead parts of the day as their confidence grows. Have reflective conversations about what has gone well and what could be even better.
At the end of the day we take the fieldwork sheets in and keep them safe for our students. We thank them for their excellent behaviour (rare incidents of poor behaviour are dealth with privately using the usual school sanctions system). Students who have been a particular pleasure to spend time with are rewarded with ClassCharts points and phone calls home to parents/carers. We always tell the pastoral team and our Principal about how the visit has gone.
After the day
We work as a team to resource lessons for our fieldwork write up. An example is this activity designed by Peter to enable yr 10 students to plot their bi-polar survey results as radial diagrams, so allowing them to judge if the regeneration of Temple Quater has improved the environment.
We make sure that we use the correct geographical terminology right from the start of year 7 and keep checking that students understand concepts such as the difference between primary and secondary research. Secondary research is carried out using computers – an example of the research task our yr 10 students do as part of their Bristol fieldwork is here.
Students tackle specific areas in each write up lesson, with the link between the enquiry question, their results and their analysis made clear. We encourage them to analyse findings as they go, then use these to inform an overall conclusion which answers the main enquiry question. It is important to spend time on the evaluation as students are likely to find this most tricky. We evaluate the methods used throughout the write up phase, then pull the evaluation together at the end, reflecting on the limitations of methods, the reliability of conclusions and how the fieldwork could be improved. Students are encouraged to use self and peer assessment against success criteria to improve their work, then teachers check the final piece.
I’ve used our year 10 Bristol fieldwork to illustrate my points, but details of our yr 7 Watchet fieldwork can be found here – https://wordpress.com/view/geogmum.wordpress.com and you can see more about our fieldwork via my Twitter account – @geogmum
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