Dr South’s Primary School is committed to giving children the opportunity to learn in the outdoor environment. We believe that taking learning outside is good for promoting children’s self-esteem, well-being, behaviour, co-operative learning and problem solving. These skills feedback positively into classroom work and other settings.
Jacobs Field provides Dr South’s children access, for educational purposes, three days a week. The forest studies programme at Jacobs Field allows the children to be taught under the leadership of a trained Forest School instructor and assistant who are fully funded by the Lin Cooper teaching bursaries.
During the school year, the children from Dr South’s School spend several afternoon’s each week in the Jacobs Field learning how to grow plants on the provided allotments as well as in a large indoor greenhouse.
In addition to growing their own food, this adventure helps them to understand the eco-systems of the natural world and how they are in balance and harmony with one another. Through this educational programme children at Dr South’s are now able to study the natural environment, forestry and ecology while in the Jacobs Field.
We run the Forest School Programme which builds on the natural instinct to learn and explore that everybody is born with. It offers opportunities for children to make choices for their own learning and to take and manage risks. Development of these skills encourages positive attitudes and behaviour.
The sessions are not in the form of planned learning activities but instead are led by the interests of the learners. The adults at each session set up a range of opportunities which are linked to a skill area that has been identified as needing work (such as negotiation, listening skills, fine motor skills or management of energy levels). At the beginning of the session the activities are outlined and each child explores these activities throughout the session. The children determine the rate, direction, depth and breadth of their learning. They are encouraged to revisit both skills and projects they have completed in previous weeks to see how time and the environment have had an effect on them and also to ensure that their learning is secure.
Children may enjoy such experiences as building shelters, woodland craftwork, telling stories, cooking over fires, climbing trees, hunting for minibeasts and making mud pies. As the programme develops, woodland tools are introduced to extend learning and provide new opportunities for risk management.
The original concept of Forest School began in Sweden in the 1950s and has since developed throughout other Scandinavian and European countries. It was brought to the UK in the 1980s and has since grown exponentially throughout the UK, with many schools now offering some form of Forest School provision.
We monitor the impact of Forest School through our work on positive Learning Attitudes.
More information can be found at: http://www.forestschoolassociation.org/