Innovative ways to use your PE and SPORTS premium
- Become a Tees Valley Growing Wild schools
Guidelines say the premium can be used to:
- develop or add to the PE and sport activities that your school already offers
- build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years.
Here at the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust we offer a range of outdoor experiences and are members of the Institute of Outdoor Learning. Our activities are purposeful and planned experience in the outdoors. They can include discovery, experimentation, learning about and connecting to the natural world, and engaging in outdoor sports.
Outdoor Learning activities can be used for academic, social, mental health, wellbeing, inter and intra-personal development. Our experiences are led by experienced environmental educators.
Outdoor Learning can help people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities reflect and learn about themselves, each other and their environment.
Our sessions can combine curriculum activities with outdoor learning, PE and sport.
Just some of the things we could offer for pupils:
Orienteering
Our site Woodhill Meadows is ideal for beginners, it has varied terrain but enclosed. Pupils learn how to use orienteering maps of different scales to navigate around the courses at the centre and Woodhill Meadow. Map reading skills are explained including scale, keys, symbols and orientating a map. The pupils will develop problem solving abilities and learn to work together as part of a team.
Shelter building and survival skills
This session can be run at any time of year; it is designed to inspire children’s creative and constructive talents. Whilst making their shelters they will also be thinking about animals’ habitats and what they need to survive.
Moorland expedition
The Moorland habitat exploration walk is 3 miles long and takes approximately two hours at a steady pace.
The walk goes up through the meadows to the woodlands and ascends to the heather moorland near Birk Brow. The views of the Tees Valley and coast are spectacular on a clear day. Land use and various habitats can be studied.
Challenge Event
The session consists of a series of outdoor challenges aimed at developing a range of skills including teamwork, co-operation, observation and communication, as well as environmental knowledge and awareness. Challenges include a three-legged beck crossing, cowpat challenge and dip and design.
Longer term opportunities include:
Forest Schools aims to build on pupil’s innate motivation and positive attitude to learning, offering them the opportunities to take risks, make choices and initiate learning.
The Forest School learning environment provides opportunities for children to develop self-esteem, self- confidence, to form positive relationships with others, to develop a growing awareness of their emotional needs and the needs of others, to learn to cooperate and work with their peers and adults and develop strategies in order to take risks within the boundaries of safety. The setting allows the children to engage with the natural environment. Forest School is about exploring and experiencing the natural world through practical activities. The children go out in all weathers, all year round, exploring and learning from the four seasons and environment changes. The children’s interest along with the varied natural resources in our woodland are used to stimulate creative thinking, problem solving and skill development, all in the guise of play. Most of the activities are child-led but of course some activities are planned by the forest leader. Sessions cater for a variety of learning styles and give pupils the chance to develop a range of skills. Tees Valley Wildlife Trust can offer a range of sessions for you school ranging from taster activities to full forest schools programme.
John Muir Award
The John Muir Award aims to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to discover, enjoy and care for the planet’s wild places in a spirit of fun, adventure and exploration.
Our experienced John Muir leaders provide a varying level of support from one-off practical conservation days to taking care of everything needed to achieve your award. We provide 5, 10 or 20 day programmes that immerse you in the landscape.
Discover a wild place.
Explore its wildness through nature walks, fossil hunting, living history re-enactment, habitat investigations, bog bouncing, storytelling and sensory activities.
Conserve it through practical management activities.
Share your own interpretation of the landscape using creative writing, art, music and drama.
If you are looking to train up your staff the Trust offers number CPD opportunities “to build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years.”
These all include active learning out of doors.
- Environmental Art
- Numeracy out doors
- Outdoor literacy
Forest School Training
The Trust is working with North Yorkshire Forest School Training to deliver courses based at Woodhill Meadows – Margrove Heritage Centre. North Yorkshire Forest School Training is an approved training provider of NOCN Forest School courses, established for seven years delivering Forest School training courses in Yorkshire and the North East.
The Forest School Level 3 qualification is appropriate for teaching staff interested in the Forest School learning approach. The focus of this course is to plan and lead groups in Forest School and to qualify as a Forest School Leader.