Wilder School - Tollgate Primary School

On the 4^th of October we visited Tollgate Primary School in Bury St Edmunds.

The day started by an assembly to the year 4’s who we will be working with on the project, to explain to them what it is they will be doing.

We then worked with each class separately, firstly gauging their connection with nature and close they feel to it. We then got the students to draw a map of their school grounds, labelling features that are important to them.

We then gave each class an area to measure and together they worked out the permitter of each of these areas and recording them. They also looked for features such as nest boxes, planters, trees, cut grass and long grass, ponds and hedgerows.

In this session with the Year 4s, we looked into if certain creatures could survive in the school grounds, and how they could make the school grounds better for them. The students came up with ideas such as: bug hotels and log piles for insects, hedgehog highways and homes, bird boxes and bat boxes and much more.

We then went out into the school grounds and had a look at the main areas we wanted to focus on and discussed what could be done to these areas to make them better for wildlife. We spoke about what can be done in the short term and what things are long term e.g. letting the grass grow.

The group decided they wanted to plant some wildflower seeds in the meadow area to create a pollinator pitstop. We will do this in a future session.

In this session we discussed what resources we needed for the changes we planned to make, and discussed ways in which the school can fundraise to raise the money. They spoke about many things, with a plant sale being the most popular.

As it was garden bird week we decided to make some bird feeders to put up in the school grounds to start making some changes for wildlife and increasing the amounts of birds visiting the site. We also made some bird fact files looking at what different birds eat, how big they are and what habitats they live in.

The students decided that they wanted to do a plant sale for their fundraising event. They made posters to advertise upcoming plant sale to fundraise for the project and came up with a list of resources that we would need.

The students also went outside and planted wildflowers in the meadow area to provide a pollinator pitstop. They discussed what is needed for a seed to grow, and what wildflowers they might see there.

Outside of the session, the students have been preparing for the plant sale, potting various different types of plants to sell.

Teacher training day!

Our Engagement Officer went into Tollgate today to deliver training to the teaching staff on how to bring their lessons outside. They focused on tree and leaf ID, map skills and plant spotting, looking at linking the curriculum with outdoor learning. By the end of the session, the teaching staff felt more confident to take their lessons outside, and felt they now had the resources to do so.

Today, the students learnt about hedgehogs. They discussed what hedgehogs eat, where they live and how to make our green spaces better for them.

They then took out the hedgehog box they brought with the money they previously raised and put it in situ, covering it with sticks and leaves so it was well camouflaged. They also dug a hedgehog sized hole under the fence and fixed on a hedgehog highway so there was an entry point for the hedgehogs.

We also admired the wildflowers they had previously planted, amazed at how tall they had gotten.