Wilder School - Great Heath Academy

On 26^th of September we visited Great Heath in Mildenhall.

The day started with two assemblies- one for the reception and key stage 1 students, and the second for the KS2 students. The aim of the assemblies was to introduce the students to the Wilder Schools project and explain what it means to be a Wilder School.

We then began work with the chosen year group - year 4's. We started by discussing how important nature is to us as individuals and how connected we feel with it. This led to some brilliant conversations about wildlife.

The students then began drawing maps of their school grounds from memory, labelling features they deem as important for the site.

We then headed outside and began measuring the school grounds, working on our maths skills working out the perimeter of the field, playground, and meadow area.

The students were left thinking about what changes they think they could make to the school grounds.

On the second visit to Great Heath Academy on the 18^th of October we finished measuring the school grounds (they are pretty big) and began looking at what they already have in the school grounds for wildlife. We looked for signs of animals such as nests, footprints, nibbled nuts etc, to see what might already be visiting the school grounds. They found a pigeon nest and some nibbled nuts, probably from squirrels.

We then discussed what improvements could be made to make it a better place for wildlife to live and they came up with lots of brilliant ideas. We narrowed these down to a select few to focus on.

In this session, we focused on looking at ways in which the students could fundraise for the project, to make the ideas they had planned a reality. They came up with different ideas in small groups, and voted on their favourites all together. We then took the ideas to the headteacher and final fundraising event was chosen- a pajama day!

We focused on looking at what already lives in the school grounds with an invertebrate study. The students looked at different areas around the field and playgrounds, seeing with invertebrates they could find. They will complete another survey once the changes have been made to see if the number of invertebrates increases.

16^th May 2023

In this session we celebrated the students raising over £600 for the project through their pyjama day!

We reminded ourselves of the plan for the action day and made some final decisions about where things were to be placed. Both classes were set to work making posters to either advertise the action day or to go up around the school ground to remind everyone about the wildlife areas.

We also had a go at making seed bombs to disperse around the site, discussing how plants grow from a seed, and why wild flowers are important for pollinators.

Today was the ACTION DAY! Time to put the planning and prep into action.

Families and people within the community were invited to come down and help. Jobs from planting a variety of different things, creating the log circle, assembling the bug hotels and building bird nest boxes. There was a brilliant turn out and it was so great to see a community come together to create lots of brilliant habitats for all kinds of wildlife.