Glacier Stories

These are a selection of stories by my S3 students, who were asked to show their understanding of
the formation of a glacial feature, a corrie, through the medium of fiction. The idea was to set an
unfamiliar method of presentation to show a strong content knowledge, rather than a formulaic
answer without a real depth of understanding. More examples can be found published already at

http://geodonn.blogspot.com/2010/11/vicky-lake-show.html

Victoria

“We’ll be friends forever, right?”

“Yeah, course”

Corrie frowned. Glacier looked distracted. Corrie followed her gaze, and her eyes fell on Valley.
Valley thought of herself as the best. Corrie couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t, ever since
Corrie was a little hollow. Glacier had just been a bit of snow back then. Glacier and Corrie had
grown together and had been friends for year.

But now it looked like Glacier was getting bored of Corrie and wanted to hang out with Valley.

“What you looking at her for?” Corrie said crossly

Glacier laughed

“ Calm down, what’s the big deal?”

She scratched Corrie’s back, which helped her settle, their equivalent fo a secret handshake which
they called plucking.

But after a while, Glacier started to drift towards Valley. It was as if Gravity was pulling her further
and further away from Corrie. Soon, Glacier and Valley were as close as Corrie and Glacier had been.
Corrie even saw Glacier plucking Valleys sides, just like she used to do to her.

Corrie cried. She hadn’t realised just how much Glacier had shaped her life until she was no longer in
it. Her two new friends, Tarn and Scree, tried to comfort her. Tarn and Scree had shown up just as
Glacier had gone. Tarn was Glacier’s little brother and Scree was Corrie’s cousin. Scree had been
affected by glacier as Glacier used to bully Scree. Corrie hadn’t found out about it until Glacier left
her and Scree had told her.

Corrie was a bit worried that Tarn, being Glacier’s little brother, might hurt her too, but he promised
that he wasn’t, and Corrie believed him. Together, they slowly started helping Corrie. She will never
go back to the way she was before Glacier came into her life, but she’ll hopefully learn t move on.
Karen

I’ll start with how I was born. My dad, Ice and mum, Cold-Climate, came together to make me,
Glacier. Over time, I got bigger and stronger, when suddenly my dad, Ice, left my mum for a new
woman, Abrasion and they moved to Hollow, a town not too far away and had a child, Corrie.

Corrie and I were in the same class at school and instantly became good friends. Two other girls,
Gravity and Plucking became friends of ours too. Corrie’s mum, Abrasion, started giving her a hard
time, making her work so hard that her back and other parts of her body began to bruise and
become worn.

Corrie and I started getting a lot closer after what had happened. I remember one time I gave Corrie
a rub on the back sympathetically but only made things worse. It turned out Corrie had a spine
condition which meant her back would gradually become more curved and the skin would peel off in
the cold weather.

At school, our friend, Plucking started getting very clingy to me and every time I tried to move away,
plucking would be with me. Gravity, on the other hand, was the opposite, very distant and appeared
quite jealous of mine and Corrie’s friendship. Gravity’s jealousy started getting in the way of our
friendship. She was pushing us apart.

Finally, I had taken enough. I left town to a place further south, leaving Gravity with what she
wanted, Corrie and Plucking. The hardest part of leaving was leaving behind other friends like Scree,
who had a breakdown resulting in him becoming very feisty, but he’s still a friend. I also left Tarn
who was always at Corrie’s feet looking up to her. He was very small and weak.

Kate
Stephanie