After receiving their LEAF award, Lesley Sim, teacher at Dalry Primary School, one of our LEAF pilot schools, has shared why the school got involved and what they learned throughout the journey of learning outdoors.
Having received our Green Flag in 2022, our ECO Committee were inspired to develop our Outdoor Learning within the school grounds to benefit everyone in the school and provide areas to play, rest, relax, wild areas, planted areas and to just spend time with friends and chat. From this feedback, we were delighted to hear of the Learning about Forests (LEAF) project from Keep Scotland Beautiful. This amazing opportunity would be the perfect inspiration to develop and sustain getting outdoors in our curriculum and embed Learning for Sustainability throughout day to day learning and teaching.
We applied and got the amazing news that we would be a pilot school. It was so exciting and we chose our P6 pupils and our ECO Pupils (P2 – P7) to be the Forest Committee. Firstly we did our awareness survey where we found that not many pupils were aware of what trees and wildlife we had in our school grounds and wider community. The pupil's feedback was to act on this to improve our knowledge of nature, connect with nature and get outdoors more.
We are so proud to have achieved this being one of the first schools in Scotland! We have had the best journey through LEAF.