Forest Schools Outdoor Education

More images and explanation of the activities can be found here.

Ready for Swimming?

Cracker passes the Millennium Dome

As Cracker passes the Millennium Dome a few members of the crew reflect on our involvement in designing what went on inside.

We didn't have long however as the Thames Barrier was fast approaching. Helming along the Thames requires a great deal of concentration as you avoid shallow waters around the inside bends and fast moving taxi boats which move swiftly up behind you like an Audi on a German Autobahn

Lock-out at St Katherines Dock

Cracker leaves her Winter residence at St Katherines Dock for Brightlingsea, but not before going through the lock gates.

Me Ol' Bamboo

This is a game that we haven't played in years. Each player has a bamboo pole and instructions are given for players to move one to the left or right. They leave their poles balanced where they are and move on to catch the next one. The command "stay" means to do a full turn on the spot. Anyone who fails to keep their pole from falling is out.

3D Towers

A problem solving activity during our Scout evening.

We gave each group 20 garden canes and a pile of elastic bands. The challenge is to build a tower as tall as possible. It must be free standing.

Pupils not stumped by ICT at the Essex Cricket Ground

This evening I accompanied 14 youngsters from Kings Road Primary School to an after-school ICT Learning Centre located at the Chelmsford Cricket Ground. It's an unusual place to find a computer lab, but in partnership with Essex Cricket Club and Essex Advisory Service, a learning centre has been established. Over 6 weeks, pupils have engaged in a variety of activities from making CDs, through to producing comic strips using Comic Life and digital video work.

Andy, who runs the centre has been impressed with the children's enthusiasm and commitment to the tasks.

Under the floorboards

I've been having problems with the central heating so I ended up
crawling under the floorboards to check for leaks.

Grow Your Own Sunflower Kit

Inspired by the Enterprise Week at my school and our brilliant idea to sell Sunflower Growing Kits, here is Max putting the kits together for members of his family. They made great little Easter gifts.

Snowman

I spent a happy hour or so helping build a snowman with my nephew, Max. It all became a bit desperate towards the end as the snow began to thaw. Quite a hard lesson for any youngster to understand really.

Winter

A reminder that Winter is still here, despite nearing the end of March. Doesn't look like it will last very long however as it's starting to thaw already.

Learning Conferences

Tonight I met with both parents and pupils to discuss the pupils' progress. I was delighted that many parents reported that their children had been talking more about the work they are doing at school and the learning taking place.

It struck me that our focus on writing learning reflections on the school blog site could be related to pupils sharing the school experience at home.

Could it be that the articles that have been written on the website helps to

• focus children's understanding of what they have been learning, whether they have written the article or not.
  
• remind them of the activities that they have been engaged in.
  
• informs them about what their children are learning and therefore could be the basis of developing a conversation beyond the usual 'What did you do at school?' to 'Can you tell me what your creative story was about today?'
  

It's not at all clear at this stage that there is a link between the blogging work and pupils sharing work more readily at home, but it's something that several parents mentioned this evening.

Sugababes - Rave on ...!

One word. Amazing.

Enterprise Week

Today, pupils at Kings Road Primary School have an opportunity to buy the products that were produced during the excellent Enterprise Week. Here is The F Factor stall, with our sales team behind, selling Grow Your Own Sunflower kits, Easter Cards and Pom Pom's. Much of what was made is now 'sold-out', which should be good for our business model!

I'm looking forward to the evaluation session, looking at what worked well and what didn't work so well.

Joseph in London

We've just arrived.... the show begins at 7pm!

District Scout Night Hike

Team 4 from 3rd Billericay, Orion Troop before they set off on the District Night Hike. The scouts were issued with local maps and a route card, which they subsequently used to plot the route. The route took us from Runwell Scout HQ, to the village of Ramsden Heath, passing through Downham before heading back to the HQ at just after 11:00pm.

Being a clear night, we were able to use the stars to navigate for much of the hike, using the compass only to find footpaths which weren't easily identifiable.

Here are the results from the District Night Hike.

1st Team 4 (3rd Billericay) - 1150 points
2nd Team 1 (5th Billericay) - 1100 points
= Team 2 (2nd Wickford) - 1100 points
4th Team 10 (1st Ramsden) - 1000 points
5th Team 3 (3rd Billericay) - 950 points
6th Team 12 (1st Runwell) - 900 points
7th Team 7 (Columbus Explorers) - 850 points
= Team 5 (1st Wickford) - 850 points
9th Team 6 (4th Wickford) - 700 points
10th Team 9 (1st Runwell) - 650 points
= Team 8 (Columbus Explorers) - 650 points

Primary Framework, Guided Writing session

The course today focussed teachers on developing Guided Writing opportunities as part of the Primary Framework. As we know, the Primary Framework builds on much of the work already done in the National Literacy Strategy, so we spent some of the day looking at some of the refinements.

The highlight was a presentation given by a Leading Teacher, Emma from Earls Colne, who demonstrated how Guided Writing was being run and developed in her own classroom. There were several aspects which I noted and will develop in my own classroom practice.

I was impressed to see how Emma had encouraged peer review and assessment of each others' work something which I do on a regular basis as an oral exercise. However, Emma had the pupils annotating and highlighting examples where pupils had met the success criteria. The children's books were 'alive' with comments and highlights, each one suggesting either success or areas for development / improvement.

We watched a clip from the Primary Framework of a class teacher sharing the Success Criteria on large sheets of paper around the room meaning that the children are able to access and refer to these throughout. In addition to these, there were also the indicators of success, like a checklist of things that needed to have been met to reach success.

Something that stuck in my mind from the course today is the shift from teachers controlling the learning to enabling learners to drive it forward for themselves. High quality teaching is now about providing the pupils with 'pathways' through their learning.

Scouts get a good soaking

Later, one of the appliances was driven outside to the yard and several hose pipes were unreeled to give the Scouts an opportunity to squirt some water. Their challenge was to squirt water to move a traffic cone about 10 metres with the water from the hose alone. We used the smaller of the hoses to begin with before moving onto the larger hoses which required adults to help the boys hold the hose steady, such was the power of the water running through them. It was a chilly evening, so we tried to discourage the boys from getting too wet, with the promise of taking them back during the Summer to squirt more water on a warmer day.

Fire & Rescue appliances

Scouts from 3rd Billericay Orion Troop visited Billericay Fire Station as part of the Community Challenge award. They gained an insight into the organisation of the Fire and Rescue service, how the various stations supported each other and how they also serve Stansted Airport in the event of an emergency. The Scouts were shown around the two appliances that are stationed at the un-manned Fire Station.

Forest Schools

This is a programme to encourage schools to take their children outdoors, no matter what the weather. The presentation today talked about how children in Foundation benefited from outdoor experiences, looking at fallen leaves, acorns, jumping over logs, following a 'night-line', firelighting and generally getting very muddy.

There are often so few opportunities to get outside in the curriculum, that this initiative was about developing the curriculum around outdoor adventure at a very early age. I thought it gave children the experiences they wouldn't ordinarily receive at home, and for the older children, especially, give them real-life experience for writing reports, developing oral literacy too.

The main issues for enabling this to happen will be identifying a local woodland that can be used and how to transport the pupils to the site. The school who presented this session used parents to drive the pupils to the woodland which isn't necessarily possible for all schools. A colleague suggested borrowing a minibus from the local secondary school as an alternative solution.

Escape to Castle Condor

To be honest, I found this presentation more difficult to follow, perhaps because I wasn't clear about the connection between the activity and it's influence on children's mathematical awareness. The programme was designed to support pupils with common errors that they made in the SATs mathematics test.

The stimulus of this work was the Castle Condor set of resources, which has been developed by the Essex SAIS Team. Pupils wrote playscripts and made storyboards for their stories and then performed them using a Digiblue camera to record the footage. I enjoyed hearing how the detective work was wide-ranging, from deciphering clues to taking finger prints.

Was the connection between this activity and mathematics about developing children's awareness of problem solving and investigative skills? If you read this and know more than me, please do comment below as I'd love to be enlightened!

Podcasting at Greenstead Junior School

Greenstead Junior School have been podcasting using an iPod Video device with a plug in microphone. The microphone makes use of the iPod's Dock connector and therefore makes recording children's voices and sounds very easy.

The teachers reported that pupils weren't at all familiar with hearing their own voices played back and quickly developed their ability to speak more concisely without the teacher giving input. Pupils also improved the quality of what was spoken after several practices and wanting their recording to be absolutely perfect without coughs, sneezes and whatever else!

A portable speaker system was also purchased to facilitate the playback of the iPod recordings.

It was suggested the whole kit cost around £200.

There were lots of opportunity to share the recordings with a wider audience using the Podcast function of sending it to iTunes and having the podcast feed available from there.

I really like the idea of using a portable device to record the sound rather than record straight into the computer. Portability is really important, especially when you consider learning taking place everywhere, including outdoors. I'd also like to find devices which are a bit cheaper than the iPod's and as in any school, accessibility to these devices is crucial for success if pupils make decisions about their usage rather than planned in the curriculum by the teacher.

Cha Cha Slide some more

It's not just the kids who have been learning a thing or two about how to dance. I've had a tremendously positive experience teaching it - an area of the curriculum I've not felt particularly confident leading before.

So why the shift? There could be a number of reasons,

1. I'm more prepared to take risks than ever before. Who says that when you teach you have to be right all of the time?

2. I didn't assume a leading role, instead sharing the lead with pupils who wanted to model some dance routines. I facilitated the session rather than controlled.

3. Having the benefit of watching model dance lessons and assimilating this understanding into a style or approach that sits comfortably with me and the children.

4. I used familiar songs:

- Macarena (Los Del Rio)
- Cha Cha Slide (Casper)
- Reach (for the stars) (S Club 7)
- Saturday Night (Whigfield)
- Candyman (Christina Aguilera)

Here are two groups of girls in my class who are performing their dance to the rest of the class.

A Common Whipping

At Scouts this evening, we were showing the fine art of whipping and splicing a length of rope. Here is Luke proudly showing off his Common Whipping.

Orion Scout Troop Website

I've just been revamping the home page of the Orion Online website. I've managed to find a way of taking a specific content label in a Blogger.com blog and produce an RSS feed.