Visit of the King’s School, Grantham, to the Hull History Centre

For the past two years the Geography Department at the King’s School, Grantham, has brought 6th form students to the Hull History Centre as part of their taught fieldwork day in Hull. Since the A-Level reforms that occurred in 2016 there has been a focus in the Human Geography side of the A-level on changing places. When studying this part of the course students will look at a local place and examine how this place has changed over time, seek to explain these changes by using geographical theory and concepts and evaluate these changes.

The Geography Department at King’s chose Hull due to the significant change that has taken place there and its links to the Holderness coast, which we use for our physical Geography fieldwork.

The part of the taught day at the History Centre sees student access the map collections. They select a certain location in Hull and use maps from three different time periods and complete land use surveys on each of these. They will then create a short presentation using this data and working in small groups seek to apply their geographical knowledge to the changes that they have seen on the maps. Students will then conduct a land use survey of their own and compare the present day use to the latest map they studied in the History Centre. As well as getting students thinking about changes that have taken place in Hull, the exercise in the History Centre also allows pupils to practice their map skills and introduces them to the investigation sequence.

As part of the reformed A-Levels students have to undertake an independent investigation. Students are tasked with creating their own title, designing and carrying out methods independently, and finally writing up the project. In the last two academic years pupils have made use of the resources in the History Centre to supplement their data collection for these projects.

The use of the History Centre in our taught fieldwork and the independent investigation has certainly enhanced student understanding of how places change and has allowed them to write richer projects as a result of this.