Welcome toPilling St John’s

C of E Primary School

We are a small school with 88 pupils. Pilling St John’s

School serves a rural community just south of

Lancaster.

Class 1

This class are our youngest children

The Reception and Year 1 children are 4 to 6 year old. We have 23 children in this class.

Year 2They have their own cosy, well equipped

room and are taught as a single year group.

These children are 6 to 7 years old. There are 14 children in this year

group.

Class 2Class 2 are children in

years 3 and 4. they are 7 to 9 years old.

Class 3

The Year 5 and Year 6 children are our older

children – they are 9 to 11 years old.

Welcome to Pilling St

John’s school

Pilling St John’s Church of England School

Comenius Project – Autumn 2013

Forest!

History of Forest School at Pilling St John’s SchoolWe 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 –

buildingExamples of our English work can be found in the booklet.

Our booklet shows you a

variety of work we have

completed since September

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.

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.

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.

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.