Year 10 teaching Year 5 about River Basins

On May the 8th, 24 Year 10 Geography students from Mr Vernon’s class went to teach Year 5 with the objective to educate them on River Basins. The aims of the lesson were to create and label a river basin, define the main features and landforms in river basin and finally to understand what happens to water when it flows from the start to the end of the river.


The Year 10 students were split into 4 groups and assigned a Year 5 class to go and teach. After a brief explanation of what a river basin is, templates were distributed to students. They were then instructed to locate and draw the main features of a basin onto their templates. Although some of the Year 5 students did not understand at first, we managed to complete the tasks of drawing, cutting and sticking the template into their books. The final product was a fun and creative “pop up model” that lifted out of their book when it was opened.

To reinforce the content; we followed the model making with a couple of exercises such as matching the words to their definitions and completing a missing word paragraph.

We would like to thank all the Year 5 teachers for allowing us into their classrooms and also the students of Year 5 for being so cooperative and good fun to work with.

Year 8 Geography Fieldtrip

Year 8 geographers recently visited shopping facilities The Avenue and Central Plaza, both on Chaeng Wattana, to compare and contrast them. This included interviewing shoppers, conducting traffic counts, land use mapping and evaluating the physical environment.

We began the day at The Avenue by counting the cars coming in and out to see which shopping centre was busier and also to see if it was busier during the morning or afternoon. After this we interviewed a number of shoppers to find out what kinds of goods they had bought as well as how far they had travelled to visit the shopping centre. Additionally, we annotated a land use map to classify the different types of shops at the Avenue. Finally, we completed an environmental quality survey which compares the built environment.

Later, we repeated this process at Central Plaza and found out that it had more comparison goods than The Avenue. Our traffic surveys concluded that Central was much busier than The Avenue. Through interview we discovered that our shoppers had travelled further distances to Central in comparison to The Avenue.

Michelle K8 and Sam S8.

Year 9 Geography Day

On the morning of Tuesday 29th, Year 9 had an awkward day. We went completely off of the timetable day and learnt about the fashion industry and how it connects the countries globally. In the morning we were divided into groups and began learning about where our jeans come from, although Connor’s had supposedly come from Kent! We received a booklet where we had to write down everything we learnt during the day.


Mr Bent Gehrt from the Worker’s Rights Consortium came in to speak to us and he told us that for a company to lower their expenses, they created their production factories in LEDC countries with lowest minimum wages. Usually these conditions are harsh and unbearable. We were also able to experience some poverty first hand as if we were on the streets. How? We made paper bags of course!

It wasn’t easy; the sizes, prices AND the amount of paper bags needed to be made was tough. It was joyous and frustrating at the same time; the paper bags were inspected very carefully by the shopkeepers, who were played by Mrs. Chappell and Mr. Vernon. It was a 30 minute session and 50% of the bags were not accepted. Some of the groups even resorted to stealing! What they didn’t realise was the bags they stole hadn’t been completed and so they went up to sell half made paper bags! The aim of the game was to make as many rupees as we could - some groups got 14 and more where some didn’t get more than 1!

People’s thoughts about the day:

“It was an eye-opening experience into the world of corporate greed, abysmal living and working conditions.”

“At the beginning of the day I had no knowledge of the injustice going on in the clothing industries! I buy lots of clothes from stores. I will definitely rethink buying clothes from certain companies again.”

After Lunch we had to think up some questions to ask different teachers who were playing the roles of corporate manager, sweat-shop worker, customer and demonstrator. After we had drilled all the information we could get out of them our main teacher, Mrs. Gavin in our case, came back and instructed us to write a reflection and the evaluation.

Many of us were annoyed that the day was over when we were all sent home because it was the best awkward timetable day EVER!

Pheobe (So9), Ae (S9) and Connor (C9)

Welcome Guy Hannay to the HIS Bangkok Geography blog

We are very pleased to announce that Guy Hannay - Year 12 has agreed to become our online Geography tutor and student co-ordinator for the HIS Bangkok Geography blogsite.

He will have his own link known as "ask Dr Hannay" and you can ask him any questions about work you are struggling with in Geography at any Year group. Guy will also add his own flavour to the blogsite, posting interesting Geography information as it arises.

12 Krabi Fieldtrip

As a part of our A level course, the year 12 geography students embarked on a plane ride to the town of Krabi in order to investigate the impacts of tourism on the natural environment.

Our excursion consisted of a thorough interview of the locals and tourists on a Thai national park called Bamboo Island. Our aim was to find out if the tourism on the island was sustainable and inspect the ways in which the local authorities manage the area. Many different methods of data collection were applied in order to prove our hypothesis. We found that tourism in Thailand is growing in recent years in Krabi, and with this, there is an increase in the adverse effects of tourism.
In addition, we found that conducting investigations was surprisingly challenging, due to the constraining factors of time management and human error. With a collaborative effort, year 12 geographers collected a broad spectrum of results in different methods, which are currently being used in class to extend our knowledge of fieldwork skills and integrate socioeconomic and environmental aspects into our learning.
The trip was a successful combination of fun and hard work. The geography class looks forward to using the information gathered and skills mastered for further studies in the subject.

Raimy Shin and Mitchell Gordon

Welcome to the HIS of Bangkok Geography Department blogsite

Topic: Inequalities in Development
How do we know the Indians were the first people in North America?
They had reservations.