On Sunday 16th September twenty three IGCSE Geography students and two teachers spent the day on Tuti Island at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile Rivers to carry out an IGCSE hypotheses based field enquiry. This field trip is the first of four full day field trips which the Humanities Department runs for IGCSE Geography students in and around Khartoum. The aim of these field trips is for students to learn and practise IGCSE Paper 4 field based enquiry skills. The focus of Thursday’s field trip was for students to explore the big idea that change can have both negative and positive socio-economic and environmental consequences, specifically how the construction of the new bridge linking Tuti Island to Khartoum has changed the lives of the local island residents. Students worked as a class in school in the lessons leading up to the field trip to develop hypotheses and a design a questionnaire. In the field students worked in small groups to ask local residents a range of questions. The students found the local residents very open to answering their questions and many residents provided students with in-depth accounts of how the bridge has changed their lives. When they returned to school their collated their data and reflected on the effectiveness of their data collection process. The IBO Learner Profile focus for this unit is for students to develop as inquires, communicators, to be open-minded and to be risk-takers.

                                       

This article Sudan’s Nile Island Joins the 21st Century provides an interesting overview of the impact of the new bridge which formed the basis of this field work http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/world/africa/10121573.stm

Natasha Winnard and Peter Mcainsh
IGCSE Geography Teachers.