Coastal environments

Another of the Key Stage 3 Geography units of the gallery that focuses largely on physical geography is Unit 8: Coastal environments. Coastal features and the processes that shape them is one of the real bread and butter topics of Key Stage 3 Geography and the footage available in the gallery certainly does it justice.

Coastal locations from around the globe are shown in high-quality and from a variety of different perspectives. Birds-eye shots flying out and over the edge of cliffs, or under and around arches, provide an amazing way of bringing the subject to life. Watching the clips displayed full screen on an interactive whiteboard managed to give me a queasy feeling in my stomach (like the feeling of going over the top on a ferris wheel!) and allows students to experience coastal features in a way that would never be possible from a photograph in a textbook.

There are animations exploring how coastal features are formed, and footage looking at the processes (erosion and deposition) that they are caused by. Headlands, arches, stacks, spits, caves, and bays are all covered. The final parts of the unit explore issues such as cliff collapse, protecting the coast by sea defences, other human issues like the effect of tourism on coastal areas, and environmental problems such as coral bleaching.

This example video details the collapse of the Devil’s Chimney chalk stack at Beachy Head, and includes some of the spectacular aerial shots that are characteristic of the unit:

Please note that this is an example clip provided through our YouTube channel and does not reflect the actual quality of clips in the gallery.