Our geography topic this half term is rivers so this afternoon we donned our wellies and went down to the River Ver in Verulamium Park to put our learning into practice. We teamed up with Laura from the Chiltern Chalk Stream Project and a team of volunteers from the Ver Valley Society to undertake fieldwork and river dipping activities.
Firstly, we took measurements of the river: depth, width and the speed of the flow. After the recent heavy rainfall, the river is pretty full and as this activity involved getting into the water, so were several pairs of wellies!! We captured these measurements on our sheets and drew a sketch of the river. After that, we then participated in invertebrate sampling, which involved examining the specimens that had been collected by the volunteers from the Ver Valley Society. Our incredible chalk stream river is teeming with life: we identified signal crayfish, bullhead fish, freshwater shrimp, cased caddis fly, mayfly, bloodworm and damselfly nymph!
We returned to school with damp feet, muddly wellies and much enthusiasm! A huge thank you to Laura from the Chalk Stream Project and to John and the other volunteers at the Ver Valley Society for helping to bring our learning to life.
