MASTER storyteller Hans Christian Anderson loved nature.
Not least because it helped to inspire the Danish author’s writing.
“Just living is not enough,” he once said. “You must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower.”
For some at St John the Baptist Primary School in Stockton-on-Tees, though, that was the stuff of fairytales.
“Other children did that,” said headteacher Kerry Coe. “Not them.”
As one of INEOS’ Forgotten Forty schools, she decided to change the narrative – and set up a Wilderness School for pupils in year 5.
Experiences are vital for children in order for them to develop their vocabulary and have ‘something to talk about
One day a week – for six weeks – Clara Warden, a former High School English teacher, took them outside the classroom on a journey of discovery.
“Children blossom in the outdoors,” she said. “It helps to develop their self-belief, self-esteem and understanding.”
Over those six weeks, they made dens and camp fires, wrote poetry, and built two beautiful bug hotels with leaf roofs and moss doors.
As they built shapes on the ground out of sticks and copied them into their school books, they were learning about areas and perimeters.
As they identified trees in the woodland and measured their circumferences with a piece of string, they were being taught how to determine the age of a tree.
And the beauty is that the benefits didn’t end when the course did.
It was absolutely money well spent, said Sharon. The children still talk about it now.
Making dens had taught them about the importance of team work. Building fires had showed them that nature could provide the resources.
Kerry had chosen her year 5s because of divisions within the class, not helped by almost two years of disruption due to Covid restrictions, lockdown and illness.
“They were not good at getting on with each other and in Y4 had a lot of falling outs and trouble on the playground,” she said. “We felt they would benefit from something out of the ordinary in terms of their learning.”
And they did.
They are brimming with confidence now. And they are much better at co-operating with each other.
To ensure that lessons learned during those six weeks are not lost, a member of staff, who worked alongside Clara, is continuing to work with groups of children from year 5.
“We want to make sure those skills are not forgotten,” said Kerry.