Social Studies

By: Dania Attoub (Year 10)

For the past 5 months, the Social Studies department have organised a project for Year 10 to participate in. In the following projects, there are teams of 3 or 4s and in each team they chose a topic to work. The wining team also gets to compete against the other Aldar schools. These topics must have something to do with the UAE (as this is originally about the UAE). Some of the topics chosen were: Women in the UAE, People with disabilities in the UAE the UAE’s journey over the years, which my group chose. In the following project each team must create a title for their work plus a logo, an instagram page, a forms page, interviews and finally the ending, where they must talk about the work in general and summarise each point. This project truly brings out the creative side of students alongside, teamwork and hard work. The final date is 13th April and I can certainly say everyone is excited and hoping for the best. Continue read with the pAAAper as I will be keeping you up to date about happens next and who the winner is.

IGCSE Geography Trip

By: Dania Attoub (Year 10)

This year in January, the very first Geography trip in this school happened. The Geography department (Mrs. Ralph and Mr. Peterson) had arranged a coursework related trip. The following trip consisted of two days in a row. A day in Al Ain Jahili Park and the second day in Dubai Kite Beach. During our trip, we learned several different skills:

• Systematic Transects to measure abiotic variables

• Using the float method to record longshore drift

• Break-in-slope method to record beach profile changes

• Environmental Quality Index

• Stakeholder Conflict Matrix.

• Pedestrian counts

• Environmental Quality Index

• Field Sketches

• Bipolar Analysis

• Annotated Photographs

It was a fun, interesting and educational trip to all of the geography students. Furthermore, it should help significantly during our IGCSE written examination. If you read along you should see some reviews from both students and teachers about the trip, along with some pictures.

What’s your name?

Mrs. Mairead Ralph

Was the geography trip a good idea?

Yes for sure, doing a field trip and applying the skills to real life is the best way to learn to prepare students for the paper 1 and paper 2 section B questions on the Exam.

Were the student well behaved?

I was so lucky to go on a trip with a bunch of students who were fun, interactive, willing to get on involved and had an outstanding behavior…..even if we didn’t agree on the standard of song choice on the way home.

Did you think that the students were benefiting and having fun?

I believe that the students enjoyed the field trips overall and I have seen first hand from doing section B questions that they have benefited from the trip as their grades have improved across the board.

Will the geography department be having another trip?

We would like to do another one in Al Ain before the end of the year to give the KS3 students an opportunity to experience geography in action

Did you enjoy the first or second day better?

I enjoyed the first day better as I had planned the whole trip myself, whereas the second day we used and external company, and while they provided us with the coastal fieldwork experience, In think that if the geography department invests some money into proper coastal equipment for next year we could do a much better job ourselves .watch this space

Review of trip from 1 to 10: 7/10 for me because of the coastal investigation we should have done so much more!

Students:

What’s your name? Anonymous

What year are you in? 10

Do you think this will benefit you for geography? Yes

What was your most favorite moment during the trip? Exploring the different locations

Was the first or second day more fun for you? First

What’s one thing you would change? The groups

Will you go again? Probably

Review from 1 to 10: 7

What’s your name?

Raya Khaled

What year are you in? 10

Do you think this will benefit you for geography? Yes

What was your most favorite moment to during the trip? The beach-when we went to the water

Was the first or second day more fun for you? Second

What’s one thing you would change? The organisation

Will you go again? Yes

Review from 1 to 10: 9/10

What’s your name?

Zoya Ali

What year are you in? 10

Do you think this will benefit you for geography? Yes

What was your most favorite moment to during the trip? Going in the water to conduct a test Was the first or second day more fun for you? Second

What’s one thing you would change? The organisation and price Will you go again? Yes

Review from 1 to 10: 9.