School Grounds Sector Partnership
School grounds offer the potential to make outdoor learning possible every day, allowing longer-term studies of the environment, and developing fieldwork skills to make the most of valuable time spent on field trips. To help ensure that all children benefit from these learning experiences, a wide range of school grounds organisations (including Learning through Landscapes, the Royal Horticultural Society and RSPB) are working together to develop a new communications campaign to highlight the importance of school grounds.
A working group met on 31 January 2008 to draft a clear statement of just why school grounds are so important, and this is now being circulated among key school grounds organisations to refine before being launched publicly in March. There will then be press releases, posters and a website all aimed at helping schools and all school grounds organisations show why school grounds are so important and the role they can play in LOtC.
One of the first big events of this new campaign will be National School Grounds Week 2008, which will take place between 9 and 13 June. Children at schools and early years settings across the country will be celebrating their school grounds, so mark the date in your diary!
As well as planning the communications campaign, the school grounds sector partnership organisations have been meeting to feed into development work on the training modules and the quality badges and to share how they are supporting the LOtC Manifesto.
Foundation Stage Conference on Outdoor Play
There are still a few places available at the LTL Early Years
Conference, on the 13 March in Birmingham. The theme this year is 'Outdoor
matters: Implementing the Early Years Foundation Stage outdoors' and
speakers and workshops will be looking at how to maximise opportunities
for play and learning. Full details are available from Learning through Landscapes,
or telephone 01962 846497.
Potatoes for schools
Primary schools can mark International Year of the Potato and learn
where food comes from by registering now for a Grow Your Own Potatoes kit. The
Grow Your Own Potatoes project is a simple, convenient and fun way to support
primary teaching on how things grow, where food comes from, and the importance
of a balanced healthy diet. It is a flexible hands-on activity that can be as
big or small as suits you, centred on growing a potato plant — as simple
as a large pot in the playground or on the windowsill. They have already
received over 4,000 registrations for 2008 and hope even more schools will join
in. See the Potatoes for Schools website.
Designing secondary school grounds for
learning
Building Schools for the Future is an unprecedented opportunity to
create secondary school campuses (buildings and grounds) which are designed to
support LOtC. LTL and CABE have joined forces to produce case studies of good
practice and guidance for those involved in BSF, and this will be available
later this year.
CABE education grants winners announced
CABE's education grants showcased several examples of the
inspirational use of school grounds. Pupils at Thornhill Primary School,
winners in the LOtC category, will be working closely with parents, architects
and the school chef to design an inclusive and accessible structure for a
vegetable and herb garden. Appledore Community Primary School won a school
grounds award for its plans to design and create a geodesic dome shelter for
their Forest School built from locally harvested hazel branches prepared with
traditional tools and techniques. Another school grounds winner, Oak Grove
College plans to open up the experience of their conservation area to
wheelchair users and pupils with poor mobility by involving pupils in the
design and construction of a raised wooden walkway that connects all areas,
running through woodland, circling the pond and linking up with other paths.
Full details of the winners are available from CABE.
Create a Breathing Place in your school grounds
On the 31 January 2008, BBC Breathing Places Schools was launched.
Reaching out to all schools in the UK to create a place for nature and wildlife
in their school grounds, the campaign will be running over the next two years.
It will feature a main Do One Thing activity each school term for children to
take part in and provide information, materials and ideas from the BBC. To
find out more about this campaign go to the BBC Breathing
Places website.
