The Setup of a Forest School!

When creating a forest school, there are four stages that one needs to go through. The first stage is Identify. It is important to include your colleagues, manager and head teacher in the possibility of creating a Forest School. They will be able to provide support, advice and help to ensure that you are gaining the most out of the whole experience. To create a Forest school, you will need a qualified Practitioner, a site where the program will run from, and a group that will benefit from the regular, long term experiences as a community and within a natural space.

The second stage is Training. In order to provide the foundations to develop a Forest School for your school, group, centre or yourself, the right training needs to be done. One of the core elements of your training will provide you with the basic needs along with the appropriate resources and condition to enable learners to feel safe, comfortable and apart of the group.

The third stage is Consolidate. During this stage, you will be applying the learning you have experience during the training period and applying those to your own school or group. You will also be working with your colleagues in order to introduce the approach to leaning and development within Forest Schools. Also within this stage you will need to develop a portfolio that consists of evident that can allow you to recognize examples to where the approach of Forest School as had an impact on the learners. This portfolio can be used as your qualification evidence.

The Fourth and final stage is called Qualify.  In this stage, you will need to make sure you are equipped with the right knowledge, understanding and skills needed to become a Qualified Forest Schools Practitioner. Also in this stage you will be planning any further programs and developing the Forest School provision as well as being able to let others understand what is capable and what is needed to being their own Forest School journey. 

If you want to read more this information was gathered from:

http://www.forestschools.com/how-to-set-up-a-forest-school/

Visit my Pinterest board to view more about what the set up of a Forest School looks like: http://www.pinterest.com/melicribari/forest-schools-set-up/