After a 45-minute drive we finally arrived at our designated school. We were excited and curious to see our allotted area, which will be adapted into an educational area. We all expressed our feelings on how lucky we were to be placed at this school, as it was placed in such a rural area. The outside area had a large amount of space, which can be used for outdoor, open rich lessons.
After we introduced ourselves to the head teacher, SENCO and office staff, we walked to the outside area. We had a very warm welcome from the school. They had provided us with some photos of the area, so we had a rough image of what we were working with. As you can expect a picture never tells the true story so a few of our brainstormed ideas were already heading out the window. One of which was changing the shed into a ‘tuck’ shop for children to buy snacks at break and lunch time. We discussed the area as a whole and the school highlighted that they felt this small section of land (5x6 metres) could be far greater than an empty space, not only for the aesthetic feel but for educational purposes. Harvey the main artistic character of the group proposed a possible merge of an allotment and quiet area because the area size could allow sufficient room for the both to work. Our excitement grew with being allowed so much freedom and control of a deceivingly large area, a project and task where we could truly express our own ideas and thinking.
After returning inside from a surprisingly mild September’s day, we began to dig deeper into the ideas the school had for the outside space. The head teacher liked our idea of combining both an allotted area and a quiet area, therefore an agreement was made.
We then discussed how our project could be improved, and we decided that we could include pupils from the school to help to build our area. The SENCO who was luckily one step ahead of the game, and already had a group of pupils which she has selected to help with our project. At that current time, we had not planned how we were going to involve the pupils but knew it was a real priority to include them in the building of our project.
All raring to go and full of excitement about the project, we went straight outside to make a start on the outdoor educational area. Cutting branches, pulling up weeds, trimming hedges; we did everything and anything through pure excitement. Luckily, we had a ton bag which we were able to put rubbish in. We tackled the garden as much as we could in one day and left the sight tidy before venturing off back home.
