Oak Class - Selbourne River Trip
Morning - by Mia R, Year 6
On Wednesday 15th October we visited Gilbert White Field Study Centre in Selborne. We participated in many activities such as going in the river with our guide Simon. Firstly we went for a walk down to the Selborne River and Simon walked us into the river and gave us sediment from the river bank (which was muddy clay). We had to squeeze it, it felt soft, weird and awesome. Then we had to make a thumb hole and fill the hole with the river water. You would notice it does not escape - this meant the clay was impermeable.
For our activities, in groups, we were given a part of the river to experiment on, our group teacher was Mrs Hussey. Ours was a deep part and the furthest away from everyone else. The first activity we did in the river was measuring the depth of the river. We had a tape measure and we had to do a measure of every 20cm of the height and depth of the water. The next activity we did was testing the velocity (speed) of the river flow - we had a rubber duck and placed it on the river 10m away from the finish line and timed it to find out how long the rubber duck took to get from one end to the other. There was one last activity before we went for lunch. We did the Selborne Shuffle. The Selborne shuffle is placing a net in the water, kicking the water bed so that mud and dirt would go in the net. We hoped to find creatures that live in the river. I found a tadpole! Afterwards we anti-bacterized our hands and Simon gathered us round to tell us what we were going to be doing next. Miss Pugh had to walk up the hill and we hoped to catch her up. Simon then said birthdays in a particular month and we walked up the hill when it was our turn. After the walk it was lunch.
Afternoon - by Olivia P, Year 5
After lunch, before we went back outside, we sat in the barn and Simon talked us through universal solution. Universal solution is a green substance that shows you whether or not water is drinkable. Simon had three beakers, two full of water and one empty. He put the universal solution in one of the pots of water and it turned green- this was the drinkable one. Then he poured some more universal solution into the other cup, this one turned bright red and this water was undrinkable. Then he showed us something that really scared him, he took the two bottles and poured a drop of undrinkable water into the drinkable water and shook it slightly. It turned red- this showed how much pollution can be found in our rivers.
After we had finished the experiment we put our wellies back on and went outside. Oak class was told to run over to a naked statue of Hercules. Once we had got to the statue we realised it wasn’t really a statue. When Simon caught up with us he explained why, “Gilbert White Field was the first naturalist to date however his experiments cost money and so he couldn’t afford a real statue so he bought this one instead!”
Then we went up the zig zag (or the zag zig if you’re left handed!) It was a very long way up so the people at the front were told to stay at each corner and encourage the class by giving high fives and fibbing to them that it was only a little bit further up to the top. Once we had finally got to the top - panting - Simon told us to get back into our groups and discuss what it would have been liked if we were here two thousand years ago. We had to pretend to be a chief of our tribes and what the top five things on our shopping lists would be if we wanted to settle down for good: food, light, fire, shelter and water.
After that we went to the woods and on the way Simon collected sticks - we soon found out why. Oak class got into a circle and Simon showed us how to build a bridge out of the sticks he’d collected. We split into our groups and started to make bridges of our own. Finally we did the last activity of the day. We had two minutes to try and build a Jenga tower out of sticks.
We finally made our way back to the centre to collect our belongings ready for the coach journey home. We had a fantastic day and learnt many new and interesting facts.
