Tag: Tong School

OH-COP week with Tong School P4-7

On the 25th September 2024, as part of the OH-COP week, Tong primary school were visited by Fraser. He organised a introduction session to orienteering, map reading and supported the young people to create maps of their local environment.

“We’re standing here, in the playground”, “That’s the playpark over there”

The young people were each given a map, shown how to use the local landmarks and map key to locate their position on the map. They were divided into groups, taking turns hiding items in the school grounds and plotting the location on their maps, and locating the items hidden by other groups. The young people engaged fully with the task, worked well as a team and enjoyed finding increasingly difficult hiding places to increase the competition.

“Let’s go, I know where to hide the bag!”, “Mark it on the map”.

“We’ve got one more bag to get”, “The boys hid it there”

The young people were then asked to use natural resources to create a map of their local environment. Some created detailed pictures of their street, displaying their houses and the neighbouring homes, including distinguishing local landmarks.

“That’s my house, and there’s the road”

“I used the leaves for the trees, and the pine cones are cars”
With support, the children added a map key to their picture. They creatively used the resources to depict their local environment.
Once the activity was finished, some children enjoyed creating other pieces of transient art using the natural resources.
If you would like to arrange a session or help to run a session like this, please contact the Outdoor Learning Team.

OH-COP week with Tong School P1-3

 

On the 24th September 2024, as part of the Outer Hebrides Conference of Peoples (OH-COP) week, Tong primary school were visited by a Fraser. He organised a minibeast hunt in the local woodlands for the P1-3 pupils.

“We went on a bear hunt in these woods, “Let’s explore!”

 

They gathered to talk about the woodlands; how to be safe, responsible, and how the area might impact the local community and the wider environment. The young people were provided with a minibeast checklist and pen, magnifying glasses and containers, and in small teams were asked to explore the woodlands to record the minibeasts they discovered.

“Help me lift this up”, “Look, a slater”, “I’ve got it in the tub”.

The young people engaged fully in the activity, sharing the equipment and celebrating each minibeast discovery made by their team. They learnt about the food chains which might be present in woodlands, how habitats and the animals which reside in them will be affected by climate change.
“That’s a consumer”, “I’ll dig him out”, “Come see the spiderwebs”.
If you would like to arrange a session, or would like to use the resources provided, please contact the Outdoor Learning Team.

OH-COP week with Tong School Nursery

On the 30th September 2024, as part of the Outer Hebrides – Conference of Parties (OH-COP) week, Tong Nursery school were visited by Fraser. He organised a minibeast hunt in the nursery garden, encouraging the young people to learn about the world around them, and the animals which inhabit the local environment.

The young people were provided with a minibeast checklist and pen, magnifying glasses and containers, and were asked to explore ‘Muddy Town’, their outdoor environment and record the minibeasts they discovered.

“Look, a spider”, “I’ll mark it”, “Look at his web”.

 

The young people engaged fully with the activity, exploring nearly every inch of the environment. They eagerly shared each discovery they made, creating stories and adding an emotional context to the activity:

“That’s a baby slug, let’s find his mummy!”

 

The young people found so many minibeasts they decided to create a bug hotel. It was agreed the bug hotel would provide somewhere for the young people and staff to rehome minibeasts they found during outdoor play, to keep them safe. We discussed what materials we would need to build the bug hotel:

“We need leaves and grass”, “We can collect sticks”.

“These will keep them warm and safe”, “The bugs can eat these leaves”, “I’ll put the snail in”.

If you would like to arrange a similar session or help or resources to run it yourself for your school, please contact the Outdoor Learning Team.

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

 

 

 

 

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 Tong School

Tim was asked by Tong School to show them how they could use the moorland, a short walk from the school, to look at the fauna and flora they could find there.

The class wrote their own journey plan to get out to the moor and they organised the class to get there. When they arrived at the moor using the Outdoor Team’s environmental box they researched the plants and invertebrates they found documenting them with photographs and drawings.

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