Reflecting, Making and Planning - Back at Ashmead School

13/10/2010 by James.

Monday’s session with the children and staff from Ashmead was held back at school. It’s a different set up to College Lake, obviously, and the children are bound to react differently to being at school as opposed to going on a trip, but I wanted to support them to remember their experiences at the lake, and to have a chance to explore the school grounds in a similar way.

We sat and looked at photographs together of our trips to the Lake first of all, with the children naming people they saw, and things that they had found or seen. I think this kind of group reflection helps provide continuity for the children, keeping their past experiences fresh in their minds as we continue with the project. It also gives me and the teaching staff a chance to hear what the children were thinking about as they explored at College Lake - sometimes children are so in the moment when they are exploring, that a later opportunity to reflect and to comment on what they have done is just what they (and we) need.

So after reflecting on the photos, we took bags and boxes and went outside to explore the school’s own grounds. We encouraged the children to use their senses to explore and to gather things that stood out for them. They clustered around wooden structures and compared them to bird hides, they found berries and feathers and described the colours of the different leaves, and we took a walk up to the school’s own large pond area to see what we could find there, and how it compared to the Lake.

A lot of what is beneficial about this project is in the process of exploring, of encouraging children to show us what they are interested in and providing ample opportunity for them to share that with us. For some children, the conversations with us and each other are really important and powerful, for others who are less confident verbal communicators, the chance to collect and to reflect through making becomes key to their equal involvement.

Once inside the children were provided with paper of various sizes, tape, glue, scissors, envelopes, labels, and different mark-making materials. I asked them to explore their finds using whatever they wanted to choose, and that they could write, draw or make. All the while, a slideshow of photos from the Lake was playing up on the wall.

Some children seemed very confident and clear in what they wanted to make or achieve, mentioning rivers, and ducks, or placing leaves and other objects carefully and confidently in particular arrangements, whilst others needed a little more time to experiment, or watch what others were doing.

From our observations of the children, we can see that there are a number of ways that the project could go next. There is an interest in animal holes, nests, hides and other enclosed spaces and animal homes of  various kinds, There are also the children who are most interested in the direct sensory experience of exploring the ’stuff’ of the world with their hands and bodies. And there are children who are keen to write, draw, or take photos that document their and other’s explorations.

To try and offer everyone something relevant to their needs and interests, I am gathering together a range of lager scale materials that we can used outside to create structures - nests, shelters, etc, that the children can use to change and enclose existing features, can climb inside and animate with their play, and can choose to label, or decorate with smaller finds and creations.

That’s all coming  on Thursday, I’ll let you know here how it all goes. In the meantime, here’s a plan for Thursday’s session, kindly drawn and narrated to us by a boy in one of the two groups, showing the nest that he would like to make outside, complete with the heads of baby birds poking out from the sides.

All the photos and details on this blog are intended as a snapshot of what happened in each session. Needing to avoid faces, and keep things fairly brief, you don’t necessarily get the full picture of any one child’s journey in the project. Within the setting these pictures can be used in series, informed by the teacher’s more in-depth knowledge of each child, and with the child’s own comments alongside to bring them to life and make sense of what the child is particularly interested in or learning about.

For a useful read on the role of documentation and reflection in creative learning projects, I’d recommend ‘Researching Children Researching the World: 5×5x5=creativity’ - follow the link for more info.

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