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Outdoor Learning

Outdoor Learning at Short Wood

At Short Wood, we pride ourselves on our amazing site and the way in which we utilize it in order to encourage all of our children to embrace the outdoor setting as a natural extension to the more traditional learning environment.

 

All of our Short Woodies, from Nursery right through to Year 6, enjoy at least one outdoor learning session each week. These sessions blend a Forest School approach, incorporating practical elements such as den building or fire lighting, with links to curriculum subjects where appropriate. 

 

Please see the photo gallery below for some of the awesome activities that our Short Woodies get up to in their Outdoor Learning sessions!

During our Outdoor Sessions we always have some free time to explore and learn new skills outside. This is the learning we have linked to the curriculum:

Autumn 2024.

Years 1 and 2.

We started the term harvesting our apples and sharing them around the school. We found lots of interesting flying insects in the branches! Then we linked our outdoor adventures to our class stories and D and T work. We spent a day climbing the Wrekin and learning how to keep warm outside in our own tent! We learned about piers and worked in teams to make some across the stream. We were learning about floating and sinking in Science so we had lots of fun outside predicting what objects would float and finding natural materials which would make good boats. 

Years 3 and 4.

We started the term linking our outdoor learning with our Geography. We were learning about biomes around the world and so we looked at the our woodland and stream areas to see what type of plants and animals live in these habitats. We have made lots of fantastic art this term following a visit to Wolverhampton Art Gallery so we made woven sculptures outside of different biomes. We used natural and man-made materials and our visitors were very impressed when they visited our Short Wood Gallery!

Year 5.

We stared the term by immersing ourselves in the life of the Cornovii tribe, who used to live in a hill fort at the top of the Wrekin. In Forest School we learned about what they ate, how they made clothes and shelter and also how they defended themselves! Then we walked up the Wrekin with Arthog Outreach and learned about using maps to plan a route. In our outdoor sessions we enjoyed making 3D contour maps and using 6 figure grid references to find treasure in Forest School! Then we developed our fire-lighting and whittling skills and enjoyed a tasty snack cooked over the fire.

Year 6. 

We started the term linking our Literacy and Art work to natural materials outside. We made natural colour wheels and then huge wolves on the playgrounds made of leaves. We designed wolf hides using our research of our outdoor wooden buildings and learned how to make a shelter which would protect us from the cold and rain. We read Beowulf and made Anglo-Saxon jewellery outside. We developed our fire-lighting and whittling skills to understand how Anglo-Saxons would use the natural materials available to them to make weapons, tools and shelters with fires to cook and heat their families.

Attendance

Overall School: 94.6%

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