Learner Centred

Firstly - apologies for no blog last weekend! I knew we had a visitor to help conclude a current chapter in our Child Led experience (see last blog) and wanted to include it. 

LAST week was celebration week  which basically means back to back campfires and 400 children loving life on hot chocolate and toasted Marshmallows! No matter what alternatives I offer - the mallows remain the treat of choice!

This term was our first time having simultaneous campfires, one in The Copse and one into the Wildlife Garden - or - one in The Copse and one Under The Trees, as all three Forest Schools are up and running and embedded in the timetable now! My colleagues have found their feet, are developing their sites and their practice, and are forging forward. So it was 12 fires across 3 sites in 4 days with no issues at all!

THIS week (just gone), was off timetable and there was some time to catch up on admin, check the site, promote the training we're hosting next May AND invite a visitor into school!

The children love the Dig Pit. If there was nothing else to do but dig they would be happy! But as we are in (on?) The South Downs in Kent we hit a layer of flint just centimetres from the surface! This slows them down, throws in a challenge, and brings up a whole new aspect to Forest School - Geology (explanatory blog here!).

Now, Google and I manage to answer many questions, but not all, and I have no idea how accurately! So when the Flint carries what looks like fossils we all get excited. Well, I get fascinated, KS1 start hunting for dinosaurs and KS2 look for diamonds! 



But answering their questions accurately becomes increasingly difficult, so one of our brilliant TAs got in touch with a local Geologist, who responded positively, then double checked with a colleague whose field is fossils, and then came in to face Year's 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6! 

Delivering info and taking questions from 6 to 11-year-olds was a challenge, but all credit to Lawrie Cowliff for managing to pitch it right and being flexible enough to 'wing it' with the youngest!

The children all responded well. Great questions, lots of former knowledge thrown in, and suitable gasps and wide eyes as the information was absorbed!

Kent was once undersea (cue incredulous classes), chalk is billions of microscopic dead things (cue children trying to see them), the fossils you found are 100 million years old (cue children's Jaws dropping)!

They looked again at the rocks they had dug up, they looked at the shapes and marks, they felt the weight and texture, and found a whole new context for the annoying lumps of rock that break our tools!

I'd like to say it was the perfect end to an exploration they started in September, but it isn't an end. It's not a classroom topic that now goes back in a box while we move on.

After half term those children will be back outside with spades. They may choose to continue their search, to build on their curiosity, to explore further. They may decide they want to try something new. They may take their investigations somewhere else for a while, and then return to Fossil hunting - either ad hoc or continuously until... Christmas? Next year? Until they leave school...?

The choice is theirs.

Meanwhile, we can't thank Lawrie enough for taking the time to talk to 5 different classes and show them that their exploration, digging, observing, curiosity, and thirst for information is valuable, important, and rewarding.

I wonder how many small Geologists were formed this week! 


Location: United Kingdom

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