Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

WOODLAND WONDERS Meera Chudasama serves up five lesson activities designed to acquaint your students with the creative inspiration that can be had from woodland spaces A teacher took a stroll through the deep dark wood, They looked beyond the trees – and the view looked good. ‘Where are you going?’ whispered a tree. ‘Come take a walk, if you dare, with me...’ ” For years, the much-beloved story The Gruffalo has conveyed to young people a sense of the wonder and magic to be found in the woods. Woodland is a great space in which cultivate learning experiences for students – be it learning about the biology of trees, uncovering the remarkable properties of natural structures, using the woods a stimulus for creative writing or focusing students’ attention to howwe can better protect our environment. Here, I’ve put together a range of cross-curricular woodland-related activities suitable for students aged 11 and up. All are designed to support students’ creativity and imagination, while also fostering that sense of wonder that’s so easily lost over the course of 21st Century childhoods. 1. Leaf Poetry Resources: White paper or exercise book, pencil and pen Leaf poetry is a great way of getting students to repurpose fallen leaves during autumn. Before heading to the woods, students can prepare their own autumn-inspired poems, or take inspiration from the qualities of leaves themselves. Then, once the students have entered your temporary woodland classroom, have them choose one or more leaves from the ground. Encourage them to use leaves in a variety of sizes, so that their pages will look and feel more texturally interesting. Having gathered the leaves they want to use, the students can then commence sticking them down into pages of their exercise books, or on a separate sheet of paper. Have the students re-write their existing poem– or even compose new verse – around, through and in between the spaces created by the leaves. This boundless sense of poetic ‘free writing’ can emulate the same sense of wonderment when wandering through the woodlands. It’s an activity in which students are able to merge the normally distinct disciplines of arts, crafts and writing. Free to write away from the usual strict lines, they can explore what it means to combine textures and words together in interesting ways. Extra challenge: Make students aware of the scientific terminology referring to different parts of a leaf, such as ‘blade’, ‘petiole’, ‘veins’ and other such terms. 2.When sciencemeets geography Resources: White paper or exercise book, pencil and pen There are plenty of ways in which you can incorporate brief biology lessons when observing any woodland space. For example, one group activity could see students creating a frame with their hands and proceeding to identify all the features they can see within their ‘frame’. After this, students could draw around one or natural objects in their books or on a piece of paper, and then label the key features and characteristics of its structure. How is the natural structure of this particular object formed?What is its life cycle?What will the object look like a day, a week, a month or a year fromnow? It might not be possible to reach conclusive answers to some of these questions in the moment, but it’s important that students are given the space to foster a sense of curiosity, and encouraged to write down any and all “Foster that sense ofwonder that’s so easily lost during21st Century childhoods” 28 teachwire.net/secondary