Our Year 7 Geography classes have been conducting field trips to the suburb of Pymble over the last weeks. It was great to see the confidence of the girls while exploring the local area beyond our gates. The trip provided them with a fabulous opportunity to collaborate and demonstrate their growing independence. They visited Pymble train station and Robert Pymble Park to investigate how liveable our area is. Students had to gather primary evidence to justify why the area was or wasn’t suitable for different groups of people.
The findings included air quality at the Pacific Highway being poor and noise levels exceeding acceptable limits. On a brighter note, Robert Pymble Park and Grandview Street were pleasant and had enough green space to provide local residents with enhanced wellbeing. Please enjoy the student reflections below:
“Our Geography field trip was a great learning experience and helped me understand the different ways in which we can learn outside and inside the classroom. Going out into the environment and observing different positive and negative qualities certainly opened my eyes to the different liveable places that surround us. Some of the qualities we learned during this excursion will help me later on in life when I look to buy a house or start a family. This was a very fun and exciting experience, going to the train station, bus stop and pacific highway made me understand liveability better. Pymble of course is a very lovely place and I hope to enjoy further field trips that are yet to come.” – Katherine Hart
“Last week, Year 7 went to Pymble for a field trip. They were collecting data to answer the question ‘is Pymble Liveable?’ They were looking at the traffic, housing quality, air quality, noise levels and rubbish. All Year 7 had a great time on the field trip.” - Amelia Brandon
“Last week, Year 7 went on a small excursion around Pymble. We explored the different aspects of liveability in Pymble by going to three different locations around the suburb. These aspects include public transport, environmental quality, traffic congestion and housing quality. We noticed that despite minor traffic congestion and litter, overall, Pymble is a very liveable suburb. We enjoyed this excursion because of the various things we learned about Pymble and the liveability of suburbs around Australia.” – Sehjal Baveja
“Recently, we went on an excursion to Pymble shops and its surrounding area to find the liveability of Pymble for Geography. It was a great experience as instead of staying in a classroom and researching on our laptops to find information on Pymble, we had the opportunity to walk out and about and create our own opinions. Testing the noise levels, measuring the air quality, grading the housing quality and tallying the amount of cars driving by were just some of the activities we participated in to determine the liveability of Pymble. Overall, it was enjoyable to go outdoors for a lesson and devise our own opinions on Pymble’s liveability.” – Elysia Sun
