Rhiwbina Living Issue 55

• thriving apiary and other
pollinators found on site
• willow circle and hazel grove
previously planted by pupils
• extensive British native trees,
both mature and recently
planted
• pond (we received a grant to
establish)
As our staff bounced ideas off each
other, new and exciting teaching
and learning opportunities began
to take shape and develop into
proposals to be developed in the
summer term.
Busy bees
With the arrival of the summer term
our returning pupils, fresh from their
Easter break, were quickly engaged
in a range of exciting activities. Our
Year 5 children got busy thinking
about both the honeybees we have
on site and the bumble bees that
visit our grounds. They researched
the hives and created graphs to
depict colony size while in the art
room they made paintings of some
of the different bumble bees they
observed around the school. Pupils
also used Google maps to gain a
better understanding of the school
grounds and their place in the wider
community.
The Year 6 pupils conducted an
extensive and meticulous survey of
pondlife found in our 5mx3m pond
which, as you can imagine, took
some doing!
At the younger end of the school,
the Reception age children have
been learning about plant growth
and cultivating their own garden
while the Year 1 pupils learnt about
insects, creating homes for them,
and pollinators which they surveyed
at different locations around the
school grounds.
Nocturnal visits
In Year 2 the pupils used their
interaction with our chickens
to inspire their creative writing
with the odd exclamation mark
to emphasise their delight and
excitement. It isn’t just insects that
we have in abundance, we also
have regular visits from a range of
nocturnal mammals. How do we
know this? The children in Year 4
have been using a motion-activated
infrared night camera. Taking the
lead in their learning, once they
had discovered the existence of
these visitors, they wanted to find
other ways of recording their nightly
visits and set footprint tracking
tunnels along the routes they had
discovered and mapped.
Minibeasts
As well as being integrated into our
mainstream classes, our Specialist
Resource Base (SRB) pupils have
been using the grounds within
their own curriculum. The younger
pupils in Dosbarth Enfys 1 spent an
enjoyable morning washing ‘Incy
schools
Wincy Spider’ down the waterspout.
In Dosbarth Enfys 2, the pupils
wanted to spend more time looking
at the ‘minibeasts’ found around the
school, which they did with great
thoroughness!
So, following our ‘Wales Outdoor
Learning Week’ INSET we now ask
the question, when planning our
future teaching, ‘What is it about
this activity that requires it to be
done indoors?’ As a result, we now
TAKE THE LEARNING OUTDOORS
whenever we can.
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