Active learning

All of Y5 spent a day learning in the outdoors after a six week programme of outdoor learning aimed at improving their writing, especially our boys' writing.

The idea was to give the children inspiration to write.  We know nationally that boys tend to find writing more challenging than girls, but that girls can also be inspired by 'doing rather than seeing'.

We've spent weeks taking part in outdoor physical activities related to woodlands.  (Shelter building, tying knots, orienteering, tree identification, leaf gathering, bark rubbings, local nature trail walks.)  We've done this regardless of the weather at one of the coldest times of the year.  All the way through children have been making notes - at the end of, or sometimes during, the activities - in a 'tree book' to help them remember how it felt to: climb up the bank; scramble back down it; get stuck in the mud; rub a hand against bark; get a nettle sting; walk for three hours without stopping; get wet and cold and muddy; help someone who was finding it difficult.  The stamina of the children has increased week by week.  They are less phased by rain and cold!  The culmination of our plan was to take the children to a woodland for the whole day.  We linked with our local high school (who have recently  leased a woodland) and ended up at the Little Woodland.  (Approx 4 acres in size.)

During the day the children had to build their own shelter from tarpaulins and ropes.  (Useful skills as it began to rain at 11am!)  During the rest of the day the children were all active and looking for things.  They had to run, walk and scramble to find orienteering flags (with tree names on them), different types of fallen leaves, make a collection of different bark rubbings and finally to collect a variety of different natural items for their scavenger hunt.  (But to also finish off with a helping hand for the woodland by collecting any man made litter we found and take it off site.)

We're absolutely convinced the children will be able to write a much better story about being 'lost in the woods' (the title of our project), but our before, and after, assessments of their writing will show if we are right or not!  The physicality of 'doing' rather than 'seeing' will have left an imprint in the heads of the children.  They'll able to say things like, I stood behind the 'majestic oak', instead of 'large tree'.

The feedback from the children to us as staff has been resoundingly positive.  Children have actually enjoyed getting wet, being cold, getting tired and earning their first ever nettle sting!

This has gone down so well, we'll be repeating it annually.

Why don't other schools give this a go?

There's a network out there called 'Teaching Trees.'  It was our Staffordshire contact who put us onto the local woodland.  There is a network of woodlands spread across the country.  Our local woodland has a committee who agreed to let us loose on their woods.  It cost us £10 for the whole day.  (Admittedly, we did have to pay for the coaches to get us there because, despite it only being 3 miles from school, it would have taken us more than an hour to walk there.)

Give it a go!