Long Mead County Wildlife Site and the National Curriculum
With its watermeadow, stream, oxbow, fuel copse and traditional orchard and history dating back to Anglo Saxon times, Long Mead offers opportunities for pupils to explore every subject in the national curriculum. We have gone through the NC, pointing out examples of what can be done on Long Mead. For more ideas see: http://www.faceonline.org.uk/teachers
English
• Group discussion and interaction –investigating something on Long Mead, planning predicting, exploring, explaining,reporting,evaluating.
• Speaking -presentan account of yourvisit. Usescientific language to name and describe the living things on Long Mead, the natural phenomena and processes (Sc KS1)
• Listening – to recordings, to the farmer, answering and asking questions
• Reading for information(non-fiction/non-literary texts) – Learn to read the wildflower/bird/animal handbooks, read in the detailthe 1500 year history of Long Mead, skimthe stories of each apple tree tagged to their branches to see how each is different, scan the health and safety instructions to make sure they are familiar
• Writing – planning and drafting. Take notes of what you see atLong Mead, then write a draft and then a final copy
• Using specialist vocabulary, engaging with challenging and demanding subject matter
• Group discussion and interaction –investigating something on Long Mead, planning predicting, exploring, explaining,reporting,evaluating.
• Speaking -presentan account of yourvisit. Usescientific language to name and describe the living things on Long Mead, the natural phenomena and processes (Sc KS1)
• Listening – to recordings, to the farmer, answering and asking questions
• Reading for information(non-fiction/non-literary texts) – Learn to read the wildflower/bird/animal handbooks, read in the detailthe 1500 year history of Long Mead, skimthe stories of each apple tree tagged to their branches to see how each is different, scan the health and safety instructions to make sure they are familiar
• Writing – planning and drafting. Take notes of what you see atLong Mead, then write a draft and then a final copy
• Using specialist vocabulary, engaging with challenging and demanding subject matter
Maths
Long Mead offers a wealth of opportunities to use numbers and solve word problems using numbers ‘in real life’ - measures of length, mass, capacity or time, perimeter and area. Here are a few:
• How many hay bales has been produced from the meadow? How many cows will this feed? The bales weigh 30kg each, how much does the whole meadow of hay weigh?
• How manydifferent types of treesare there in the fuel copse?Record findings on a map with a key; show the number of different types of tree on a bar chart.
• Find the age of the old oaktreeon the island by measuring around its trunk about one metre from the ground. Every 2.5cm of girth corresponds to approximately one year's growth. So a tree with a girth of 100cm will be about 40 years old (100 divided by 2.5)
• Work out the area of the ash tree’s crown. Walk round the tree and mark out where the outside edge ofthe leaves ends. Measure from the trunk to the edge of the crownin eight different directions and draw out the shape on square paper. Use this to work out the area of the crown.
• Leaf count: estimate the number of leaves and the total leaf area of the big old willowtree. Count the number of leaves on one twig. Estimate the number of twigs on a branch and the number of branches, then multiply these numbers together to get the (rough) total number of leaves.
• Measure the height of the tallest black poplar tree using a clinometer or scale-diagramand practice your angles and degrees and perpendicular and parallel lines
• Understanding the need for standard units of measure –the apple trees in the orchard must be 20 feet apart to get enough light. Pace the distance with your own feet. Has the farmer got it right? Are your feet the same size as hers?
Long Mead offers a wealth of opportunities to use numbers and solve word problems using numbers ‘in real life’ - measures of length, mass, capacity or time, perimeter and area. Here are a few:
• How many hay bales has been produced from the meadow? How many cows will this feed? The bales weigh 30kg each, how much does the whole meadow of hay weigh?
• How manydifferent types of treesare there in the fuel copse?Record findings on a map with a key; show the number of different types of tree on a bar chart.
• Find the age of the old oaktreeon the island by measuring around its trunk about one metre from the ground. Every 2.5cm of girth corresponds to approximately one year's growth. So a tree with a girth of 100cm will be about 40 years old (100 divided by 2.5)
• Work out the area of the ash tree’s crown. Walk round the tree and mark out where the outside edge ofthe leaves ends. Measure from the trunk to the edge of the crownin eight different directions and draw out the shape on square paper. Use this to work out the area of the crown.
• Leaf count: estimate the number of leaves and the total leaf area of the big old willowtree. Count the number of leaves on one twig. Estimate the number of twigs on a branch and the number of branches, then multiply these numbers together to get the (rough) total number of leaves.
• Measure the height of the tallest black poplar tree using a clinometer or scale-diagramand practice your angles and degrees and perpendicular and parallel lines
• Understanding the need for standard units of measure –the apple trees in the orchard must be 20 feet apart to get enough light. Pace the distance with your own feet. Has the farmer got it right? Are your feet the same size as hers?
How old is the Long Mead oak tree?
Geography
Long Mead is a perfect place to ‘carry out geographical enquiryand develop fieldwork techniques outside the classroom’ and to ‘ask geographical questions about people, places and environments and use geographical skills and resources such as maps and photographs.’ It not only borders the River Thames, which is specified in the national curriculum as one of the ‘significant places and environments,’ it has an oxbow, meanders, floodplain meadow as well as an unusually wide variety of landforms, soils and terrains for a very small area.
Knowledge and understanding of places
• Workwith maps and identifydifferent land marks: The Thames, Beacon Hill, Wytham Woods, the oxbow, the stream, the floodplain, the road. Learn the points of the compass.
• Map a route round the meadow and get your friends to follow it. Plot the different apple trees in the orchard onyour own map, marking out your favourites.
• Imagine how someone in Tudor times might have drawn a map of Long Mead and surroundings to warn people of the dangers of the river and Wythamwood where highwaymenhid in the oaks.
Knowledge and understanding of patterns and processes
• Learn about Long Mead through the seasons. Look at how the meadow floods in winter when the rain is heavy and the River Thames overflows
• Look at howerosion and deposition change the course of the River Thames and have made the oxbow around the island
• Examine the Long Mead weather station and plot the weather for the day
Knowledge and understanding of environmental change and sustainable development
• Long Mead is perfect for learning about ‘water and its effects on landscapes and people, including the physical features of rivers’
• The conservation and management practices undertaken on the Long Mead can be used to explain how and why change occurs and man’s influence on the landscape
• Learn how improving the land after the Second World War by adding fertilisers led to the loss of flower meadows like Long Mead which is one of the last 2 per cent left in Britain and what is being done now to manage it sustainably
• Examine the wildlife in the hedgerows of Long Mead and understand what the loss of Britain’s hedgerows mean
• Look at the advantages and disadvantages of Long Mead’s organic farming methods compared with those of the surrounding farmer’s fields
• Learn about the loss of Eynsham’s famous old orchards, their benefits for wildlife and Long Mead’s efforts to create an orchard in the traditional way, with many old local varieties of big tall trees in which birds and insects and micro organisms can live
• Come and collect some seed from Long Mead and try and grow yourown wildflower meadow in your school or garden
Long Mead is a perfect place to ‘carry out geographical enquiryand develop fieldwork techniques outside the classroom’ and to ‘ask geographical questions about people, places and environments and use geographical skills and resources such as maps and photographs.’ It not only borders the River Thames, which is specified in the national curriculum as one of the ‘significant places and environments,’ it has an oxbow, meanders, floodplain meadow as well as an unusually wide variety of landforms, soils and terrains for a very small area.
Knowledge and understanding of places
• Workwith maps and identifydifferent land marks: The Thames, Beacon Hill, Wytham Woods, the oxbow, the stream, the floodplain, the road. Learn the points of the compass.
• Map a route round the meadow and get your friends to follow it. Plot the different apple trees in the orchard onyour own map, marking out your favourites.
• Imagine how someone in Tudor times might have drawn a map of Long Mead and surroundings to warn people of the dangers of the river and Wythamwood where highwaymenhid in the oaks.
Knowledge and understanding of patterns and processes
• Learn about Long Mead through the seasons. Look at how the meadow floods in winter when the rain is heavy and the River Thames overflows
• Look at howerosion and deposition change the course of the River Thames and have made the oxbow around the island
• Examine the Long Mead weather station and plot the weather for the day
Knowledge and understanding of environmental change and sustainable development
• Long Mead is perfect for learning about ‘water and its effects on landscapes and people, including the physical features of rivers’
• The conservation and management practices undertaken on the Long Mead can be used to explain how and why change occurs and man’s influence on the landscape
• Learn how improving the land after the Second World War by adding fertilisers led to the loss of flower meadows like Long Mead which is one of the last 2 per cent left in Britain and what is being done now to manage it sustainably
• Examine the wildlife in the hedgerows of Long Mead and understand what the loss of Britain’s hedgerows mean
• Look at the advantages and disadvantages of Long Mead’s organic farming methods compared with those of the surrounding farmer’s fields
• Learn about the loss of Eynsham’s famous old orchards, their benefits for wildlife and Long Mead’s efforts to create an orchard in the traditional way, with many old local varieties of big tall trees in which birds and insects and micro organisms can live
• Come and collect some seed from Long Mead and try and grow yourown wildflower meadow in your school or garden
Meanders of the Thames at Long Mead where the water has eroded its banks.
History
Identifying differences between ways of life at different times.
• Use the Eynsham local history website to look up old maps of Long Mead and the River Thames and Toll Bridge, compare with the landscape today
• Find the apple tree in the orchard that the Romans brought to Britain. See the ridge and furrows still visible from farming in Anglo saxon times. Look at the old map of Long Mead and see how open field strip farming continued through Tudor times into the 17th century. Examine Long Mead’s collection of old scythes from England, Scotland, Austria and Russia.
• Look up towardsWytham Hill, where the main road from Wales used to go towards London. Read about the dangers of Wytham Wood where highwaymen hid behind the ancient oaks.
• ‘Travel in Victorian Britain’: Learnhow the Victorians used ditches, sluicesand streams on Long Mead as they developed the Thames to transport coal and to the west and Cotswold stone to London.
Identifying differences between ways of life at different times.
• Use the Eynsham local history website to look up old maps of Long Mead and the River Thames and Toll Bridge, compare with the landscape today
• Find the apple tree in the orchard that the Romans brought to Britain. See the ridge and furrows still visible from farming in Anglo saxon times. Look at the old map of Long Mead and see how open field strip farming continued through Tudor times into the 17th century. Examine Long Mead’s collection of old scythes from England, Scotland, Austria and Russia.
• Look up towardsWytham Hill, where the main road from Wales used to go towards London. Read about the dangers of Wytham Wood where highwaymen hid behind the ancient oaks.
• ‘Travel in Victorian Britain’: Learnhow the Victorians used ditches, sluicesand streams on Long Mead as they developed the Thames to transport coal and to the west and Cotswold stone to London.
19th century water jar found in silt near tow path.
• Britain since 1930: Listen to tales of the old local farmerand the changes in farming since he was a lad in the 1930s. He made hay onLong Mead inthe days beforeweather forecasts when, if you could hear the steam trains from Wolvercote you knewthe wind was in the east and the weather would be fine.Pollarding willows to feed the cows, laying the hedges instead of barbed wire fences.
• How many varieties of apple can you find in the Eynsham Coop? Come to Long Mead and learn about the Eynsham Dumplingand the Oxford Yeoman, apples grown in Eynshamthat were famous through out Britain in the 1930s, when you used to be able to get over2000 varieties of apple in Britain. Learn about the famous Eynsham apple grower John Wastie whose orchard now lies under the A40.
• How many varieties of apple can you find in the Eynsham Coop? Come to Long Mead and learn about the Eynsham Dumplingand the Oxford Yeoman, apples grown in Eynshamthat were famous through out Britain in the 1930s, when you used to be able to get over2000 varieties of apple in Britain. Learn about the famous Eynsham apple grower John Wastie whose orchard now lies under the A40.
The historic Eynsham Toll Bridge, once the main trading route from Wales to London
Science
Life processes and living things.
• Look at the different plants in the wood, the orchard, the haymeadow, hedgerow and around the oxbow lake.
• Variation and classification: use a picture frame to count the number of different species in one square foot of the old watermeadow compared with the roadside where the soil has been fertilised for the crops to grow well but where the flowers cannot survive
• Record the number of different plants, different leaf shapes,stick samples onto sticky cards orphotograph them and use the handbooks to identify each one
• Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Imagine you are standing in the middle of it. Can you hear the barn owl? The bees buzzing? The skylark? The sound of cars on theroad? The water in the stream? The leaves rustling? Mark where you hear them in your magic circle.
• Come pond dipping in Limb Brook and discover all the minibeasts in a jam jar of water.
• Watch the barn owls and tawny owls bringing food to their youngrecorded on the nestbox cameras in the wood.
Reproduction
• Learn about the parts of the flower and their role in the life cycle of flower plants from the apple and pear trees of Long Mead Orchard. Each tree its own story, which you can discover from an information sheet hanging in the branches, with diagrams of the different flowers and fruits.
• Discover how the insects and birds disperse the seed of the flowers in Long Mead watermeadow, how the squirrels bury the hazel nuts in the fuel copse and how the River Thames carries the seeds of the ash tree on the island down stream.
Electricity. Forces and motion
• There is nomains electricity on Long Mead although a high voltage pylon stands in the meadow.Take a walk round the oxbow and see the wind generator and solar panels generate power from the sun and wind and pass it down wires to big batteries which are then converted to provide electricity.
• Look at the sluggish water in the oxbow lake and compare it to the force of the current in the main river and theLimb Brook stream. Look at how the force of the wind pushes the propellers of the wind generator
• Learn about the gravitation forces of the earth under the apple tree in the orchard (the Flower of Kent) which is a graft of the very tree that inspired Isaac Newton
Adaptationand feeding relationships
• Explore the different habitats of Long Mead –the open sunny watermeadow with its hares, skylarks, grass snake, the wood, the stream and reedbed with kingfishers, otters, mink and the orchard.
• Examine the foodchain of the hedgerowand the micro organisms that rot the wood in the copse turning it back into fertile soil.
• Find the world’s first apple tree Malus Sieversii in Long Mead orchard, which grows the size of a house and learn how humans adapted this wild apple not through its seeds but by grafting to make apple trees smaller and easier to harvest and to look and taste exactly as they wanted.
Life processes and living things.
• Look at the different plants in the wood, the orchard, the haymeadow, hedgerow and around the oxbow lake.
• Variation and classification: use a picture frame to count the number of different species in one square foot of the old watermeadow compared with the roadside where the soil has been fertilised for the crops to grow well but where the flowers cannot survive
• Record the number of different plants, different leaf shapes,stick samples onto sticky cards orphotograph them and use the handbooks to identify each one
• Draw a circle on a piece of paper. Imagine you are standing in the middle of it. Can you hear the barn owl? The bees buzzing? The skylark? The sound of cars on theroad? The water in the stream? The leaves rustling? Mark where you hear them in your magic circle.
• Come pond dipping in Limb Brook and discover all the minibeasts in a jam jar of water.
• Watch the barn owls and tawny owls bringing food to their youngrecorded on the nestbox cameras in the wood.
Reproduction
• Learn about the parts of the flower and their role in the life cycle of flower plants from the apple and pear trees of Long Mead Orchard. Each tree its own story, which you can discover from an information sheet hanging in the branches, with diagrams of the different flowers and fruits.
• Discover how the insects and birds disperse the seed of the flowers in Long Mead watermeadow, how the squirrels bury the hazel nuts in the fuel copse and how the River Thames carries the seeds of the ash tree on the island down stream.
Electricity. Forces and motion
• There is nomains electricity on Long Mead although a high voltage pylon stands in the meadow.Take a walk round the oxbow and see the wind generator and solar panels generate power from the sun and wind and pass it down wires to big batteries which are then converted to provide electricity.
• Look at the sluggish water in the oxbow lake and compare it to the force of the current in the main river and theLimb Brook stream. Look at how the force of the wind pushes the propellers of the wind generator
• Learn about the gravitation forces of the earth under the apple tree in the orchard (the Flower of Kent) which is a graft of the very tree that inspired Isaac Newton
Adaptationand feeding relationships
• Explore the different habitats of Long Mead –the open sunny watermeadow with its hares, skylarks, grass snake, the wood, the stream and reedbed with kingfishers, otters, mink and the orchard.
• Examine the foodchain of the hedgerowand the micro organisms that rot the wood in the copse turning it back into fertile soil.
• Find the world’s first apple tree Malus Sieversii in Long Mead orchard, which grows the size of a house and learn how humans adapted this wild apple not through its seeds but by grafting to make apple trees smaller and easier to harvest and to look and taste exactly as they wanted.
Cowslips in spring
Art and Design/Design and Technology
• Come and learn how to weave baskets and hurdles, as people did in the past, using the purple and almond willows of Long Mead.
• Make shapes from clay dug out of the meadow when the track was laid –the clay that was once turned in to bricks for Eynsham houses at the Cumnor brick factory
• Learn to whittle with local woodsman
• Explore the shape, pattern and texture of natural materials.
• Learn to sketch or take photographs in the magical landscape of flowermeadow, hill wood and river.
• Make your own apple and pear juice and taste the different flavours of Long Mead’s many varieties
Using information technology
• Look at Long Mead on Google Earth –see the river and the oxbow from the air and the remains of the ridge and furrow farming on the opposite bank
• Watch the Long Mead owlets on the internet
• Check the weather forecast before your visit and compare it with what really happens
• Look for evidence of the history of Long Mead and the River Thames crossing in the Eynsham Record
Managing hazards and risks
Long Mead can be used to teach children many issues ofhealth and safety required by the national curriculum.
• Come and learn how to weave baskets and hurdles, as people did in the past, using the purple and almond willows of Long Mead.
• Make shapes from clay dug out of the meadow when the track was laid –the clay that was once turned in to bricks for Eynsham houses at the Cumnor brick factory
• Learn to whittle with local woodsman
• Explore the shape, pattern and texture of natural materials.
• Learn to sketch or take photographs in the magical landscape of flowermeadow, hill wood and river.
• Make your own apple and pear juice and taste the different flavours of Long Mead’s many varieties
Using information technology
• Look at Long Mead on Google Earth –see the river and the oxbow from the air and the remains of the ridge and furrow farming on the opposite bank
• Watch the Long Mead owlets on the internet
• Check the weather forecast before your visit and compare it with what really happens
• Look for evidence of the history of Long Mead and the River Thames crossing in the Eynsham Record
Managing hazards and risks
Long Mead can be used to teach children many issues ofhealth and safety required by the national curriculum.