My Best Course - Get out!

If someone is struggling with letters in the classroom, get them outside, says Charlie McNair. ‘You can find different ways of teaching – use sticks to make letters or make them out of mud paint. It is about making it multi-sensory and understanding that shapes of letters in the classroom can be quite intimidating. If you are outside you may not remember the word but you remember the feeling – say, the mud being cold and wet – and that triggers a piecing together.’

Ms McNair went on a two-and-a-half-day training course from Rooted Forest School, Outdoor Learning Practitioner, aimed at Level 2. The course delivers some background to modern outdoor learning, and practical information on getting the team ‘on board’, planning and delivery, managing and improving outdoor learning environments, and ecology.

The qualified playworker, who teaches Reception-age children at Kingstone and Thruxton Primary School in Hereford, says the training started with a morning session of teaching and group discussion about the principles of outdoor learning and Forest School, which was followed by role play, with practitioners taking on children’s roles.

Ms McNair says a particularly interesting part of the course was learning how to help children learn. She explains, ‘You come away with a huge number of ideas, feeling inspired and encouraged.

‘The biggest thing was how people learn and why people might be struggling to understand. Or why children might be showing disruptive behaviour. I feel I know a lot more about child psychology.’

She adds, ‘I was really quite dyslexic at school and really struggled, but I had a very big connection to the outside world. I found the course made my struggle with education really make sense.

‘Now I think it is really important to encourage questions and opinions, because it encourages children to feel they are allowed to ask questions because that is how you learn. In the classroom there is so much pressure on a teacher to just deliver by the end of the day, or month or year. Children will slip through the net in the classroom, but they might go outside and suddenly it gives them a voice.’

• http://www.rootedforestschool.co.uk/