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Forest school - Coggle Diagram
Forest school
How did it help their learning? 
The school is located in inner-city Cardiff and many children don't have regular outdoor experiences, forest school provides them with this.
One of the activity allowed the learners to toast their own marshmallows, this activity developed their independence and resilience as they were in charge of lighting their own candle and toasting their marshmallows.
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There were a carousel of activities for the learners to explore, therefore allowing them to experience different areas of nature and develop a range of skills.
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The learners were able to engage with real life road safety issues and had to be cautious of following rules.
It is a break away from the standard classroom environment, therefore assists with increasing the engagement of the learners by providing them with authentic and real life experiences - four purposes.
What was useful? What was not useful?
Despite the activities not directly link to the topic or theme being studied, the class were able to develop new skills and have new experiences.
There were three separate activities during the day; 1 - toasting marshmallows, 2 - physical group games and 3 - making mud monsters. The fact that the activities were so different allowed the learners to develop a range of skills and experiences.
The day demonstrated just how important adult supervision is when conducting out-of-school learning. This was evident through the organisation of the walk to and from school as well as the organisation of the individual activities.
The structure of the school day needed to be completely turned on its head in order to accommodate for the trip and therefore needed a lot of planning and preparation as well as risk assessments.
Despite the trip and activities being 'adult-constructed' they were in fact child-led as they encouraged problem solving, exploration and independence.
I discussed the negatives with the forest school lead and she explained how there is a lot of paperwork, planning and risk assessments required to be completed in order to ensure a safe and enjoyable trip for all pupils and staff.
What was interesting and motivating?
The learners thoroughly enjoyed the activities that provided them with the opportunity to work independently and complete more 'grown up' tasks. This was particularly prominent during the lighting of candles for the marshmallows and being allowed to explore freely to forage items to create their mud monsters.
During the mud monster making, the class were granted creative freedom and thoroughly enjoyed getting muddy and creating their own designs. It was interesting to see how every learners monster was unique.
Despite the day being a timetabled event, forest school itself was used as a method of motivation and treated like a reward for the class.
As mentioned, the school is set in inner-city Cardiff and is very lacking in outdoor space for upper primary learners. Therefore, forest school inspires learners to explore outdoor experiences.
Personally, I thought that allowing the learners to toast marshmallows was ambitious, particularly considering these activities were to be taught to reception to year six learners.
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Despite the team games promoting physical activity, some learners quickly lost interest as opposed to their consistent engagement throughout the other activities.
The learners struggled to listen to some of the instructions during the walk to and from the park in terms of road safety. This resulted in challenging behaviour that was difficult to control.
Some of the learners who are not interested i the outdoors or physical activity quite quickly lost interest in being in the park and began to complain that they were 'tired/hungry/thirsty'.