Wilder School - Include Bury St Edmunds

On the 29^th of September we visited Include Primary school in Bury St Edmunds. We worked with a mix of students and started by determining how important nature is to the students. We did this by chalking out the playground and separating it out in 3 sections: agree, neither agree nor disagree, or disagree. We then read out statements about nature and the students would run and stand in the area that corresponds. Some would find that they may be at the higher end or lower end of one of the sections, so we ended up making it into a scale.

After this, the students drew a map of their school grounds and drawing features that were important to them. These maps were interesting to see, as they included things such as football goals and basketball post and where they like to meet their friends.

We took some measurements of their school grounds, discussing how to work out the perimeter of an object.

We then discussed about what creatures could and couldn’t survive in their school grounds. Using chalk on the playground again, we created a table with one column for yes it would survive and one for no it wouldn’t. The students then looked around the area, pretending the be the animal, thinking if there is suitable habitats and food sites for this animal to survive. They then placed the animal in the column they believed it belong.

We left them with the task of thinking about what changes they could make to make their school grounds a better place for nature.

On our second visit to Include we decided we wanted to start making some habitats for wildlife after discovering there was very limited habitats for wildlife currently in their grounds. The students made a bird nest box, a bee hotel, small bug hotels and some bird feeders to put up around their grounds.

We discussed about what might live in/use these and why it is important to create these habitats.