Does it feel like learning?

All article images courtesy of BBC, 2020

Thanks to my 3 year old I’ve recently discovered the brilliant CBeebies series ‘Let’s Go for a Walk’. 

For those of you not spending much time on CBeebies, the programme follows Ranger Hamza and a small group of young children who, quite simply, go for a walk.

Supported by Ranger Hamza the group get from A to B and the in between is packed with learning that cuts across the curriculum, enriches their local knowledge and helps them develop essential life skills.

It’s how this learning is delivered that is brilliant and the brilliance is in its simplicity that engages all learning styles:

·       the visual learners have 360° of information to absorb as they move around and move between places

·       the auditory learners are engaging with the constant discussion and the noise of the environment whether it be traffic or the rustling leaves

·       the reading/writing learners who are usually best catered for in the classroom have opportunities to look at the signs around them and this could be further extended by putting these learners in charge of a map or a quiz sheet

·       the kinaesthetic learners that learn by doing have lots of opportunities as they are learning in the environment, as opposed to about it.  Examples include dropping pebbles into a tidal river to learn if there is water there, discovering mini beasts that cross their path and finding natural materials that would be suitable for bird’s nest.

It’s sensory experience as the group not only see but hear, smell and touch their surroundings for example touching old and new stones on a church building, listening to the sounds of machinery from a construction site and copying them and pretending to be the animals that they think may live nearby.

And it engages the imagination.  Seeing a tower and asking who may live there (a Princess, obviously!) or asking what a house covered in ivy looks like (a teddy bear, what else?!) provides an opportunity to encourage a creativity which can too easily be lost.

Seeing the Ranger join in the opportunities to hop like a rabbit in the park or sway like a tree in the wind is also very powerful.  It shows that these activities aren’t limited by age and this helps to reinforce the safe and secure place of learning as well as develop confidence and self-esteem.

And let’s not forget the fun.  The question posed in the title of this article is one I would love to ask the children at the end of their walk with Ranger Hamza. I would also like to ask them what they learnt.  My guess would be that it didn’t feel like learning at all and that we’d run out of time talking about all the things they learnt in the session. 

Learning and not even realising it as you’re too busy engaged in the experience, what a wonderful education that is.

Emma Richardson-Calladine is the owner and director of waving back. Emma provides marketing and education for sustainability consultancy for businesses making (and trying to make) positive environmental and social impacts.  If you have links with a school that you would like to put to good use or would like to develop links as part of your corporate responsibility, email hello@wavingback.co.uk and visit www.wavingback.co.uk  for more information.