Our Year Nine and Ten Geographers have been busy bees so far this Summer Term!  In addition to the Environment Agency visiting us at Sherrardswood, they also got to take a trip to the Olympic Park in Stratford as part of their Human Geography Fieldwork for their GCSE. Students used this time to observe the sustainability of urban Communities and environments in the East Village. The students used many techniques to answer their key question of whether or not they feel the East Village is sustainable. In the morning, students took part in completing an Environmental Quality Survey, as well as completing a Service Tally.

This allowed pupils to ascertain the quality of the area, and the services it provides, to the local residents since the 2012 Olympics. In addition to this, pupils undertook pedestrian counts to see how busy different areas were and completed questionnaires with the residents of the East Village to discover their opinion on the sustainability of the area. By the end of the trip, our students were very much enamoured by the area and most agreed they would like to live in there! Overall, it was a very successful trip, providing a memorable experience for our students to use in their GCSE exams.  
 

 
In this picture our Year 10 pupils are in one of the many green spaces that the East Village provides. This area is called ‘The Waterglades Wetlands’ – the 2.5 hectare wetlands contains over 43 varieties of wetland and wild flower plants and in excess of 600 trees. The area also cleans and treats water that runs off from the public areas and roofs in East Village. It is then re-used to provide water to the landscaped areas across East Village, the central courtyards within the residential plots, and also for toilet flushing for the local school.  The students decided to use each other as clipboards!