Balaklava High School
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14 Gwy Terrace
Balaklava SA 5461
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Email: dl.0769.info@schools.sa.edu.au
Phone: 08 8862 0600
Fax: 08 8862 0650

YEAR 10 GEOGRAPHY COASTAL DIORAMA CHALLENGE

Students in Mr La Grutta’s Year 10 Geography class put on their environmental manager hats this week to save their coastlines from wave erosion. Students had to balance between putting in place man-made barriers while also keeping the natural beauty of their coastline intact.

Groups were first given a specific scenario to construct their coastline, for example, some groups had cliffs while another group had a beach with housing on the foreshore. After creating these coastlines using natural resources at their disposal we then created a wave simulation to see how much of their coastline was destroyed by small, medium and storm sized wave patterns. Witnessing this destruction and their pristine coastlines being destroyed, students then had to plan a range of strategies to stop coastal erosion. To help with this we watched a video about the types of preventative measures councils use to restrict the impacts of coastal erosion such as bluffs, rewilding projects and more drastic measures such as rock walls.

The images you see here are the end products of each group’s erosion management strategies. There were a wonderful range of different approaches - with students finding it challenging to balance between more drastic measures that while effective, destroyed much of the natural beauty, in comparison to more natural rewilding projects that, whilst resistant to small waves, struggled to survive the larger storm level wave surges.

A bit of friendly competition in the group presentations led to a highly enjoyable afternoon, where I found it far too challenging to judge the best design and recruited Ms Pringle to be the judge. The winning group - Molly McArdle, Lily Tiller, Emily Gibson, Chloe Bull, Lucy Pym and Chloe Bull - created a coastal management program that found the perfect balance between keeping the natural aesthetics of the beach, while making sure that their strategies would stop stronger storm surges.

A big thank you to my Year 10 Geography class for what has been a productive and enjoyable experience for my first time teaching Geography. They were always willing to give my crazy project ideas a go, whether that was going through bins to measure the amount of plastic rubbish or carting around tubs of sand to recreate coastal erosion.

Mr La Grutta