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Outdoor Learning By Kirstin Whitney My initial brief was to setup and run ‘Forest School’ sessions in the grounds of Kingswood primary school. To me this was an exciting opportunity to combine my passion for the outdoors with my passion for teaching. I was lucky enough to train one day a week for 6 weeks with the Forest School Learning Initiative which was brilliant – after a day’s training I went home inspired to tackle the next essay with enthusiasm and interest. In school I practised what I could with the children in my class and enjoyed their enthusiastic response. Time well spent I love the outdoors and feel well rewarded when I can share this passion with others whether through gardening, hikes, bike rides, climbing, camping or canoeing trips. I was sure that I could use the forest school sessions to inspire, interest and enthuse school children too. My only problem was that first we didn’t have a forest and second, I had spent the best part of the last eight years in a classroom constantly working towards the next SAT test! How could we integrate the principles of Forest School with the National Curriculum and make it ‘time well spent’?
First, we do have quite large school grounds with some trees and a number of grassed areas. Second, we already had an outdoor classroom built a few years earlier. And last we have a local park only a short walk away. I did, however, need to put some thought into how this land was used. Land sustainability was one of the most important topics in our Forest School training. In our case if all 600 pupils were able/allowed to stomp around the few wild areas that we had on the grounds daily for just six months there would be little vegetation left and nowhere to continue with the lessons. Complementing the children’s classroom learning I made both a short-term (one year) and long-term (three year) plan which included dreams for the outdoor areas with my very modest budget. In the winter I still planned to be outside but doing activities that could take place predominately on drier ground such as the playground or paths around the school. In summer we would use the grassed areas and also take the classes to the park (to protect our grass). We also converted a disused area at the school to do some growing. I researched online and signed up to all the free information and resources that are out there, I joined Twitter @wildurbans and began my own website www.wildurban.org to record the children’s work. The website also gave me a source from which to reflect and develop my ideas. It would have been all too easy to take children outside and carry out a weekly activity from the Woodland Trust website (which is wonderful) but I needed the lessons to be curriculum led rather than activity led. With all the resources that I had been collecting I now began to work through the curriculum to see where I was best placed to complement the children’s classroom learning.
PrimaryFirst
