Throughout our curriculum at Laxton Junior School, all the children are offered a wide variety of opportunities to enhance and support their learning outside the classroom, including activities and educational visits. At the end of each School year, all of the Forms participate in the ‘Whole School Day Out’, whereby each Year group ventures off on an excursion beyond the classroom, ranging from kayaking on Grafham Water to an exciting day at Twin Lakes.
A developing aspect to our outdoor learning curriculum is gardening within our own School grounds. All Year groups now have the opportunity to plant and grow a variety of vegetables and the children are responsible for planting, watering, sowing and harvesting their produce. The children learn where their food comes from and how it grows from a tiny seed. As well as tasting their lovely vegetable produce, they sell them at the local supermarket. The new addition of the gardening club to our After School Activities programme is another opportunity for children to have additional time in the garden.
All learning beyond the classroom is carefully tailored to each age group:
Reception children thoroughly enjoy the outside facilities in their base and, in doing so, experience their first School steps in an interesting environment. Many an exciting trail has led the Reception children from their area and around the garden - following numbers, finding pictures and listening to sounds. They also explore making maps of the school locality and collecting objects for creative activities during walks around the grounds.
All of the children continue to take their learning outside, particularly within their science and humanities lessons, from tracking down water for a Pond Life topic, to looking further afield and learning about water and animals on their visit to Barnwell Country Park. Beyond the classroom has proven to be a wonderful stimulus to enhance children’s RE lessons and talk about the natural world, listen to the sounds around them and look carefully at all the things we can see. Our very own ‘Monet Bridge’ also inspires some wonderful artwork. Being Victorians for the day at Stibbington gives Year Two pupils the opportunity to experience a little of what it was like going to school at that time.
This is when children begin to explore further away from our school locality, gaining a greater insight into the natural and historical world on their trip to Flag Fen. All of the children also experience their first exciting residential visit to the Frontier Centre and take part in a variety of outdoor activities.
Children now have the chance to become explorers during their Habitats unit of work and investigate the outdoor area in search of many animals and their homes. With the wonderful variety of birds, insects and other animals that make the grounds their home, the children observe these habitats first hand. Another short residential visit, to York this time, expands the children’s learning in humanities and supports their work on Invaders and Settlers.
For the older children at Laxton Junior School, the range of lessons and activities taken outside continues and the children use the garden troughs to help support their area and perimeter work within their maths lessons. All of Form Five attend the Bushcraft residential visit. This visit provides a wonderful opportunity for the children to live and learn in the natural world. The children spend two nights living under the canopy of nature, making fires, cooking their own food, building shelters and learning about the natural environment,
Form Six utilise the garden area as a theatre, enabling them to enjoy their drama lessons in the fresh air. They also become explorers in the woodland garden and hunt for a variety of mini-beasts. The children collect and categorise the insects to support their learning on adaptations. Form Six finish their time at Laxton Junior with a week’s residential visit to France. At this point the children have the opportunity to put all of their French learning to good use, immersing themselves in the culture and language. There is also the biennial ski trip for Years Five and Six - always an amazing experience!