Curious Minds

Schools Tackle The Great Outdoors

There’s a lot going on out there: schools tackle the great outdoors...

Curious Minds has noticed how many of our Creative Partnerships projects this year are looking at using the school environment for learning. Projects underway range from creating treasure maps and treasure hunts in the school grounds to support maths ( Lytham C of E Voluntary Aided Primary School) to making dens (Longshaw Infant School) and sensory gardens ( St Michael’s on Wyre C of E Primary School). We also have some fantastic models of good practice in using school grounds and sustainability in our CP schools. Brabins Endowed, Chipping – nominees for a Learning Outside the Classroom Award, has held conferences and good practice sharing sessions for other schools and has been developing its outside space for 10 years. Holy Trinity School in Darwen hosts allotments, this year with the addition of bees and chickens and St Leonard’s in Padiham has done projects tracing food from field to fork. 

The Association for Science Education recently fuelled the debate by calling for imaginative teaching of science using the school  environment: their report is HERE http://www.ase.org.uk/documents/ases-oswg-report/  but you can also access it on our Environment Day resources.  They give a resounding endorsement to the value of fieldwork and external teaching in supporting the science curriculum – but acknowledge difficulties around resourcing, access to information and expertise and perhaps a lack of initial confidence in teachers in knowing where to start.

With all this debate and expertise around it’s no wonder that Curious Minds has been keen to respond to teachers’ interest in the subject. We recently held a successful training day on the subject with our partner Places Matter! and have uploaded the resources onto this site.

Using artists adds to the huge range of possibilities offered by even the most unpromising school environment. The creative eye can help and support teachers in their adaptation of their outdoor classroom and some of our great practitioners have huge experience of creating learning environments in even the most unpromising of settings.

It’s worth looking at the resources and also at some of our case studies here on the site.