New Year Reflecting

When you work in education you have two New Years. 

Every September is a new start, a new intake, a new class, and a curriculum that's usually been tweaked if not reinvented! Then there's the turning of the year, when everyone around you is talking of resolutions, plans, aims, and goals for the coming twelve months, and we reflect on what has brought us to this point.

When I took on the role of Forest School Leader at Chartham Primary, Forest School provision looked very different. I started in November 2019, so although this academic year is my fourth teaching year here, it's only three years since I began delivering Chartham Forest sessions - and a lot has happened! 

My predecessor delivered sessions three afternoons a week, to half-classes of fifteen x KS2 pupils. By the start of this academic year, we had three fully qualified FSLs covering fourteen full classes from eyfs to Year 6! 

Like all schools, we constantly aim to improve teaching, so our provision has evolved and improved, and for us this includes outdoor learning experiences as well as in the classroom. 

We rewild areas, introduce support for wildlife, plant hedges and trees, make others areas much more child friendly, and adapt spaces to cover different aspects of Forest School and create opportunities to take the curriculum outside.

To do this we need three main ingredients:

Firstly, it has to be a whole school decision. 

Driving forward any kind of Outdoor Learning has to have the support of Senior Leadership, and preferable be part of Whole School Development.

When I took the post at Chartham they had already made the decision to move from providing sessions via a qualified member of staff on a part time basis, to having a full time dedicated Forest School Leader. 

The school has acres of grounds and putting it to use still seems the most sensible way to develop and maintain it!

Secondly, researching how it can work for our setting. 

Visiting other schools to see how they provide Forest School is always useful. Seeing different settings, sites, environments as well as talking to the school about where they fit it into their timetable opens up a multitude of options to tailor to fit your needs.

We have our own open door policy where other SLT as well as FSL visit to see what we do and how we do it. We are always happy to help.

Thirdly, we invest in training. 

Having staff qualified for delivering Forest School, and then trusting in their training, provides somewhat of an expert on site! Together you can devise the most beneficial provision within the parameters the school has.

We even host training each Spring/Summer to encourage local schools to provide similar experiences for their pupils.

Forest School always has a rolling 3 year plan. Much of it focuses on site management, planting, and maintenance, but alongside this there is a plan on how to use Forest School more. How to maximise its benefits, how to make it integral to school life and school ethos. 

We have space for more than one basecamp so Forest School sessions can run simultaneously, we chose to invest in having more qualified staff. and moved some PPA cover outside. With two sessions at the same time, it allows both teachers in a year group to prep, plan and assess together.

Each Forest School Leader can focus on developing an area in which to maximise Forest School Learning. The result is three separate basecamps, surrounded by differing environments, using the space to its best advantage. They compliment each other and lend themselves to different aspects of Forest School. All three are therefore maintained, monitored, and facilitating lots of activities and learning.

Meanwhile, although in Forest School we don't 'teach', we do instruct for safety and offer information. We answer questions. We research together, experiment, discover, and practice. The careful fostering of curiosity alongside the resilience and understanding that comes from being immersed in nature provide transferable skills for the classroom as well as for life long learning.

We all want independent learners within a prescriptive curriculum, so we use Forest School to guarantee opportunities for teamwork, cooperation and communication, encourage children to be listeners and observers, and support the self esteem and self motivation boosts growing confidence produces!

And we aim to keep that going as long as possible!

Forest School doesn't need to be an add on! It is intrinsic as an active part of learning and developing for children, so feeds directly into school improvement.

In a relatively short period of time we have integrated Forest School into our timetable to support wellbeing, provide enrichment, and lay the foundations of ecology and sustainability education.

Like everything in education it is never complete. It will evolve and grow and as life changes... 

and Chartham Forest will be altering again.

As 2023 grows closer, life, education, budget, and children's needs influence what provision will look like in Terms 3 - 6, and Forest School will adapt again...

But more of that next year!