At St Mark’s, Outdoor Learning is an inspirational process which offers all children opportunities to achieve, develop confidence and self-esteem, through hands on learning experiences in a vocabulary rich environment.

When a child is confident, able to think for themselves, take risk, ask questions and communicate ideas they are ready to learn in the classroom and life.

At St Mark’s the Outdoor Learning programme helps develop:

• Independence
• Confidence with self-esteem
• Communication and social skills
• Creativity and imagination
• Team and problem solving skills
• Greater understanding and awareness of the natural environment
• The ability to recognise and manage risk
• Learn new skills, use and build on these skills to create, construct, adapt and solve problems.
• Healthier lifestyles

The outdoor learning environment is a rich, dynamic, natural space that is ever changing and a perfect environment for learning and development in children (and adults) of all ages. Its value as an essential learning resource has been recognised by many pieces of research and more recently by Ofsted.

• Being outdoors has a positive impact on children’s sense of well-being and helps all aspects of children’s development.
• Being outdoors offers opportunities for doing things in different ways and on different scales than when indoors.
• Being outdoors offers first hand contact with weather, seasons and the natural world.
• Outdoor environments offer children freedom to explore, question, challenge themselves, use their senses and be physically active and exuberant.

Outdoor Learning happens every week on a year group rotation. Children need to be suitably dressed for the weather so they can fully immerse themselves in the experience. Please speak to your child's class teacher to ask about it.

Inclusion

At St Mark's, outdoor learning is inclusive and accessible for all children. Adults provide carefully planned support at the beginning of activities, modelling positive behaviours, communication skills, teamwork and safe risk-taking. This helps children develop the confidence and skills needed to participate successfully.

As pupils become more confident, adult support is gradually reduced, encouraging greater independence and self-belief. Outdoor learning provides practical, hands-on experiences that allow children to learn in ways that suit their strengths and interests. Pupils are given opportunities to make choices, direct aspects of their own learning and solve real-life problems collaboratively.

Through exploration, discussion and shared experiences, children develop resilience, communication skills and confidence. Every child is supported to engage, contribute and succeed, helping them become independent learners who are willing to take on new challenges.

Rules of Outdoor Learning

• Do not pick anything growing (Unless the teacher says so)
• Do not put your fingers or anything else in your mouth
• We stay within the boundary given
• We don’t run 
• We follow the fire pit rules when seated around open flames
• When using equipment/ activity areas we follow the rules and instructions
• We drag sticks and point downwards when walking around each other. 
• We follow the individual tool rules
• We respect each other, animals and plants
• We will inform the teacher if we find sharp/dangerous objects and will not touch it ourselves
• We inform the teacher immediately if we are feeling ill or are injured

Meet the Team

Sophie has over 8 years experience delivering dynamic and exciting forest school sessions to both schools and events across the country. Sophie also works closely with children who have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and from difficult backgrounds who are struggling with mainstream education. Her other skills include drama teaching, sensory and guided meditation specific to little ones, performing educational shows for children and entertaining improv walkabout at festivals. All of these alternative approaches to learning and interaction complement forest school extremely well. She is qualified to a level 3 standard and has forest school first aid training.