Category: Place Based Learning

Teamwork with Stornoway Primary P7

On Friday 1st November 2024, Tim and Fraser worked with the young people from Stornoway Primary P7. The activities were based in the Castle Grounds. The focus was teamwork.
Fraser’s activity was to design a shelter in the woods. The young people in groups of six to eight were tasked to build a shelter they could spend the night in. There was discussion about if this was an fun prospect, for some young people they were not definitely not excited by it.

 

The group were able to choose different sized tarpaulins, ropes, and to use natural resources. They were given thirty minutes to selected a suitable site in the woods, design their shelter, collect resources, and erect their home from home. All the teams were able to construct a shelter, some with a little more success than others.

After the thirty minutes, a team ‘spokesperson’ evaluated their shelter to the other teams. They talked about why their team selected the area, what resources they used and why, and what they would do differently next time.

The activity could be replicated in any school grounds and the equipment can be borrowed from the Outdoor Learning Team.

On possibility is the activity could be used to create opportunity to discuss the challenges of refugees and how people could become refugees. This progression has been used by one school with a lesson in a shelter leading to a discussion on how this made them feel.

The first part of Tim’s activities was for sub-groups to use a set of ‘skis’. These are planks with ropes which the  young people use to cross an area where they are not allowed to touch the ground with anything other than the skis. There were varying degrees of success leading to discussion of what successful team work might look like and different method of achieving success.

 

The equipment for these types of exercises can be borrowed from the Outdoor Team with briefing instructions and support if you would like it.

The second part of Tim’s activity was each sub-group was given a large sheet of paper on the ground and they had to create an art work, to create  window, or a picture with a deliberately vague brief to encourage creativity and discussion. The pictures were beautiful.

The resources needed for this were a sheet of paper and the young people’s imagination. They co-created transient art which in this case was connected to the environment and in some cases grew out of the environment. The activity could be used to create opportunities for discussions around sustainability.

Training for Nursery Staff (Part 2)

Tim delivered a train the trainer course to allow practitioners to be trainers for the Forest and Outdoor Kindergarten SCQF level 7, the plan is to embed this training throughout the authority. As in the last post on this training it is based round exploring the three areas of People, Place and Pedagogy; the Who, Where and Why of good practice.

The training was delivered at the Water Wheel Building in the Castle Grounds and the surrounding area and although it was chilly it was a great space to play in.

We started by discussing fun important memories from growing up, and although we were in an outdoor setting most of people memories had an outdoor element to them.

Even with the theoretical content which was needed we tried to make the course as practical as possible to illustrate how the learning through playing can be taken outside.

The aim is for the participants to grow their confidence to take the principles into their nursery setting and encourage others to spend more time outdoors with the young people.

Training for Nursery Staff

Since Tim has come back from doing the Forest Kindergarten Training he has been working with the Early Years team to help them develop their skills.

He ran a pilot course with the combined nursery staff in Tong school and will be running a trainer course in November 2019.

Although the course is called forest it is not just aimed at forests, the training is aimed at helping early years practitioners to take the young people they work with outside more regularly.

The model used is to consider the Place, the People and the Pedagogy;

Considering the Place involves the suitability and the practical steps needed to manage the young people in the place.

The People thinks about who is involved; the young people, the staff, the carers/parents managing their needs and expectations.

Pedagogy is the how what and why we take young people outdoors

A possible visual model:

The objective it to show practitioners the connectivity and to challenge them to consider the elements in their own practice.

This is partly done inside through conversation, which because of time constraints is done inside.

The final session on pedagogy was done outside in the fantastic garden area of the school. The practitioners were given opportunity to play. This, apart from being great fun in the rain, highlighted for this group the importance of child lead learning and how few resources they needed as the environment provides them. They saw imaginative play, social skills development, gross motor skills, fine motor skills and peer learning happen within their own group and considered how they could use this in their own practice.

Small world play

 

 

 

 

Outdoor Play in Uig

Sgoil  Araich Uig have been developing the outdoor area at the back of the school as a place they can go and learn through outdoor play. As part of this Tim was over and had the chance to discuss developments, spend some time exploring the area and playing.

If you would like help developing the area round your nursery for outdoor play please contact Tim or Isi

Exploring the Moor with Tong School

The class were doing a project on black houses and wanted to look at and explore the moor behind the school. Tim first looked round the village to see if there were the remains of any black houses on the crofts but sadly in Tong he couldn’t find any, so the decision was to have a walk out onto the moor, look at how it was different to the rest of the village and how the land might be being used.

The class used the Outdoor Journeys model developed by Simon Beames at Edinburgh University as a start point to prepare. Tim went into the class and they looked at the map and discussed the potential hazards, wrote this out before completing their journey plan to be left a the school before they set off. (Here are the CnES versions of the documents; Journey Plan, Hazard Assessment)

The walk went out of the school up the road, left out towards Craignish and the followed the peat tracks past the fank to the 42m high point. Then before turning to head for the wind turbine and then back down Barraidmhicille Mhoire to the school.

It was a very frosty afternoon so frozen puddles were a great source of interest with everyone looking at the ice and then jumping on it to smash it.

As part of the project to look at how people lived in black houses the class learnt the song Eilean Fraoich, they thought it would be good if they stood on top of some peat banks and sang the song.

On the way round the moor the class looked at the plants and birds they saw, it was so cold they came to the conclusion that was why they didn’t see many birds apart from seagulls.

The cold wasn’t bothering the cattle we  saw near to the end of the journey.

The journey ended back a the school and the inevitable ‘wellies off scrum’ and lots of smiling faces.

Tong School Visit to Arnish Gun Emplacements

Just before the end of the school term, as part of the project on the wars and into the Iolaire disaster, a trip to the gun emplacements at Arish Point was organised by Tong School. Tim went along to help and tell a few stories.

The bus dropped the classes at the carpark below the Bonny Prince Charlie cairn and they walked along to the emplacements.

The ruins of the emplacements gave a great opportunity to explore and to talk about what it must have been like to be based there on a wild winter night. We also looked across at the Beasts of Holm and talked about the Iolaire disaster.

  

The gun emplacements housed two 6 inch coast guns, had a watch tower and two search lights in smaller enclosures. How effective the guns would have been is questionable; when the Dutch Submarine Zeehond failed to respond to the challenges one of the guns was fired, it missed and the shell bounced over the water, embedding itself in the wall of Sandwickhill Cemetery. Much to the embarrassment of the Navy but to the huge amusement of the young people form Tong School when they heard the story.

Although the daylight at this time of year is short it does allow for some amazing skies which we took the chance to enjoy before boarding the bus to go to the museum for a visit.

Environmental Studies with Breasclete School

Tim went to Breasclete School to explore the croft land next to the school, there were plenty of invertebrates including a spider who was ‘snacking’ on a fly. The young people used the Field Studies Council fold out charts to identify the species and plants they found and collated the information using cameras and drawing.

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