Research for BothHe spent the whole afternoon in the newly arranged forest school area in his primary junior school. He climbed trees. He said the afternoon was for fun and had free roam, and he played with friends playing chase around the trees. All the children were individual animals based on the first letter of their name, and Euan was an eagle. This led him to pretend to be an eagle at points when playing. Euan could see the circle, at the centre of the forest, when he was in the tree. Three whistles and they had to return to and sit at the circle where there was a fire. The adult demonstrated how to light the fire. They spoke about what they did in the forest and what they liked/enjoyed about it. Then they had to say their name and do their action (Euan was pretend to be an eagle). Euan did a lot of digging as well. He found a root from a tree creating a hole around it. He very, very enjoyed being an eagle, climbing and running around in the mud. He liked running around in the mud because he made everyone else muddy. His class, Year 4, does this once a week every Wednesday until end of year. One thing to say about writing the notes for this topic was that when I asked Euan to explan what he did for my notes, I had to cut out alot of the notes because he said honestly that half of it was lies/made-up. I kind of wish at this moment that I hadn't erased those lies/stories because I believe that's part of his imagination being developed from his experience. He managed to make up new stories based on his personal experience of venturing in the forest location. (I think I can remember him speaking about finding dinosaur bones, I initially thought he meant toy ones, however I think he meant real dinosaur bones - similar to what an archeologist may discover through digging in the dirt).
What I've learnt from visiting Ravens Academy and from Euan's story is that schools efficiently use the technique of repetition. Here the adults/teachers at the end of the day make children speak about their experience, a mode to re-live it but carefully thinking as to why and how to demonstrate this to their peers, expecially through the terms of "playing"/pretending to be an animal of the forest. The natural setting of the forest provided Euan with many opportunities to use it as a "laboratory"; to experiment and find new possibilities, such as seeing the ground from a different perspective in a tree. Comments are closed.
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