GEOGRAPHY students at a city college were bursting with knowledge after they scaled a volcano and witnessed the Northern Lights during an enlightening trip to Iceland.
The humanities department at Worcester Sixth College Form College accompanied 22 second year students to the Scandinavian country earlier this month.
The trip was set up to provide an opportunity for pupils to put their fieldwork skills such as recognition of features, interpretation of landscapes and map reading into practice.
They were able to investigate the eruption of volcano Eyjafjallajokull, which they got the chance to climb, while their itinerary also included a glacier walk and trips to the Blue Lagoon and Gulfoss waterfall.
But student Charlotte Longman said witnessing the Northern Lights was her stand out moment as she said it was a “once in a life time opportunity”.
Fellow student Matt Wickens added: “I enjoyed the travelling around and being amazed by the completely different scenery and the astonishing fact that active volcanoes are just treated casually and lived by. To be honest it is just an incredible place to visit.”
Karen Southall, teacher of Geography at Worcester Sixth Form College said the experience was hugely beneficial to her students.
“They gained many different geological and geographical skills from the trip,” she said. “They developed better case study knowledge of Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption by witnessing first hand the social impacts on the local community in Southern Iceland.
“They were also able to put theory into practice by climbing a volcano, seeing the nature of its eruption and the heat being emitted 40 years after its eruption.”
