Year 7 investigate evidence of Glaciers

To conclude Year 7’s work on Glacial Landscapes they visited the Lolldaiga Hills this week to carry out some geographical enquiry work. The main focus was on finding evidence that the Lolldaiga Hills had been carved out, over 10,000 years ago, by glaciers that formed on Mount Kenya. As the bus pulled into the Lolldaiga Hills the children shreked: ‘is that a Drumlin?’ ‘maybe that's an Erratic’ ‘are we in a U-Shaped Valley?’ all fabulous Geographical terminology that was music to Mrs Walby’s ears! Using compasses to locate Mount Kenya, who was sadly hidden behind clouds, the children kept a keen eye on its location as the bus worked its way north, further into the Lolldaiga Hills trying to see if the glacial valleys lined up with the source of the glaciers. With the protection of armed rangers and some inquisitive Zebra’s looking on we were able to disembark the bus at multiple locations to draw field sketches of different features. Everyone was delighted to see first hand what we had been looking at during lessons.

We stopped at one ‘hill’ and had a heated debate as to how it was formed. At first many put forward a convincing argument that it was a Drumlin - however the shape did not 100% fit with their usual formation. So we settled on it being an example of Medial Moraine, where two glaciers had previously joined and material was deposited as they met. With much gusto we hiked up the Medial Moraine and were rewarded at the summit with sensational views across the valley. The children were enthralled to see scratches along the rocks line up with the direction of the valley making it very credible that they were glacial striations. After a spot of lunch under a tree and a quick pitstop among a herd of elephant; we headed back to school, confident that we had proved our hypothesis that the Lolldaiga region was shaped by glaciers thousands of years ago.