Holistic Grand Design Approach for School Playground at Ryder Hayes County Primary School
Playforce School Grounds Consultant met with Head Teacher Joanne Speller and EYFS Coordinator Lynne Emery to plan the new outdoor learning environment
Playforce School Grounds Consultant Sam Flatman met with Head Teacher Joanne Speller over a year ago. At that time Ryder Hayes had spent money internally improving the school, but nothing had been spent on the outside school playground, otherwise known as the outdoor learning environment.
The first project that the school needed to undertake was the outdoor classroom for the Reception class children.
The school Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) coordinator Lynne Emery had been on many courses and was keen to use the outside space as an important aid to learning. -
(Interestingly Ofsted will from September 2008, expect all schools and pre-schools to be able to complete the 6 goals of early learning outside, just as they do inside! Ofsted had also mentioned improving the outside in the schools last report)..
When Playforce arrived at this school Lynne explained that her children had no where to shelter from the elements and had no fixed outdoor resources.
Joanne said
‘We choose Playforce because they were the ONLY company to see how the space could be used through our eyes, we needed a space that would meet the educational needs of the EYFS curriculum and Sam came up trumps with that.’
The outdoor learning environment now provides the children with a huge range of activities come rain or shine; they can complete numeracy tasks, mark marking, road awareness, role plays, imaginative play, digging, growing and not to forget physical play that promotes gross motor skill development, which has been shown in studies to improve fine motor skills such as hand writing!
The school was able to pay for this development by using its Devolved Formula Capital (DFC). As Joanne put it,
‘The school had been frugal in other areas and so was able to use this money, I see DFC as a chance to improve the facilities for today’s children, if I keep it back then I am depriving today’s children of resources that will improve their time with me. If I don’t use this money the LA will take it away from today’s children.’
The school was able to do this as the project was creating an ‘outdoor classroom.’
The governors also like the fact that Playforce presented a holistic grand design approach, so that they could see the whole ‘vision’. They were so impressed with this first phase that the school has now transformed both its infants and juniors playgrounds (where it has improved playtime behaviour) and is now looking at the nursery space. This grand design approach has worked well to improve the schools retention of numbers at a time when nationally schools have falling roll numbers.
Joanne explained ‘All our children just love the new equipment, they now have lots more things to do at break times and this has helped to keep them fit, active and healthy, the Playforce playground equipment is great at sparking off imaginative play and everyday the children go on new adventures'.
