Wild Citizens Project

We worked with a group of Year 2 and Year 5 pupils over the course of two years - 2022 to 2023. The first phase focussed on rewilding part of our grounds and encouraging wildlife into those areas alongside renovating some of our garden spaces. The second phase built on this progress and shifted towards the pupils' experience of growing produce. We ensured both phases were strongly linked with our curriculum objectives for those pupils. 

In the short term, we wanted to ensure our pupils had opportunities for some practical experience and an opportunity to have a positive impact on their space within school which would both empower their sense of community and well being. Longer term, we wanted to explore sustainable strategies to firmly embed elements of practical learning outdoors into our curriculum provision.

The impact on pupils has been very positive so far. They are telling us:

“I get to create stuff to help the environment.”

“My favourite part is planting all the flowers and seeing them all grow.” 

“I enjoyed Growing Wild - it is good for the environment and fun!”

“I like Growing Wild because it helped me learn more about nature.”

“After Growing Wild, I have started to grow my own vegetables and fruit.”

“I’ve enjoyed Growing Wild because it was a fun and interesting activity. We are making a big change to the environment and our mental health”

“I really enjoy growing things.”

This has also had a significant impact on the way pupils interact with their outside spaces in a positive way and also with each other. We have an increasing number of pupils now volunteering their own time to look after the grounds through our lunchtime gardening club and other activities which help in and around school. As a result, we can now plan to expand the scope to include more opportunities for more pupils to be directly involved. We do have had to consider how this will be funded and resourced moving forward but we are determined to ensure this is embedded in a sustainable way into our school provision.

Here is our Eco Code:

In our school…

We put litter in the bin

We walk to school as often as we can

We turn things off when we’ve finished using them

We treat all living things with respect

We care for our environment

We reduce, reuse and recycle.

We have taken part of the Eco School program and have been awarded the Bronze and Silver Eco awards.