17. Pilling St John’s Church of England
School
Comenius Project – Autumn 2013
Forest!
18. History of Forest School at Pilling St John’s School
We have extensive grounds at school. Part of these grounds have a small woodland area and this has been used
to develop our work for Forest School over the last few years. We have been developing outdoor learning
across the curriculum.
19. We launched our Comenius
Project by planting a tree in
our school grounds.We
celebrated Grandparents
Day and they came into
school to help us with
planting – we took the
opportunity to plant a
special tree to celebrate
the beginning of our
project.
20. We held events to publicize our work.We
supported the Forestry Sustainable
Council’s event – FSC Friday and
emphasised the importance of our forests to
children, staff and parents. As an eco school
we are developing our understanding of
how important our forests are.
21. The English School Curriculum
• Prescribed by the Government
• Pressure to raise standards in the basic
skills of English and maths
• A full timetable which sometimes makes
it difficult to be creative
• Our approach – we link the curriculum
subjects together to help us be creative
whilst developing those essential basic
skills.
22. For example: Through our forest project we have been able to
develop
• English – reading skills – using the theme forest to develop
reading skills through developing research
• English - writing skills – reports, instructions, poetry, story
• Maths – in some year groups using the forest to develop skills –
counting, shape and size
• Geography – looking at forests in different places – rainforest,
local environment
• Art – sketching what we see in the forest, producing sculpture
• ICT – research, presenting information
• Physical Education – adventurous activities – building
Examples of our English work can be found in the booklet.
24. Year 2 children visited a local wood.We
identified the plants which we could find.We
sketched them and took pictures.This work
links to our science and art curriculum.
25. We have horse chestnut trees in
our grounds.The fruit of the
horse chestnut are conkers and
there is a history of children
collecting these to play conker
games.
26. Christmas – we collected woodland plants and brought them into
school.The children created decorations for tables. As we worked we
learned about the different evergreens.
27. Next Steps!
We are looking forward to the next steps in
our work together. Our children are excited as
we develop our work.
We are also seeing a growing interest in our
children to learn about your countries and this
will be another success gained from the
project.