Education
Groundwork Solent works with schools and directly with young people to help them meet their potential and encourage them to succeed. Through our work with schools, young people learn about conserving natural resources and have the opportunity to get involved in their community and connect with older community members.
Examples of our work include
- Young Roots
- Supergrounds
- Cantell School
- One World Schools
- Communities for the Future
- Our Future World
- Ecochallenge
Young Roots
The Young Roots project is focused on young people from the Rowner Estate who have expressed an interest in investigating the history of their community. The young people involved have formed the Young Roots Time Team, which has been engaged in researching the heritage of Rowner, with the team members actively involved in directing the investigation to search out their local roots. The team has chosen to research Rowner in the 17th Century, and is looking at a number of topics, including fashion, sport, money, landscape and art. At the end of the project they will present findings in an imaginative and innovative way, which will make clear the links to their rural past.
Supergrounds
Supergrounds is a national £6 million, six year community programme funded by The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBSG), working in partnership with Learning Through Landscapes (LTL) and Groundwork UK.
By improving school grounds as a means of assisting the educational and emotional development of children, and raising the profile of the importance of school grounds through the media and with Government, school grounds can be made into attractive and stimulating places where children can learn and play in safety.
With help, advice and support from a Groundwork advisor, participating schools will have eight months to plan, develop and implement their projects.
Each school receives
Supergrounds Award of £4,000 cash (plus the possibility of further funding through other sources)
- 4 days of an advisor’s support time
- Supergrounds Project Guide for Schools
- Create Your Playground Teacher and Pupil Resource Pack
- 1 year’s membership to Supergrounds Learning Network via Learning Through Landscapes/Grounds for Learning
- Supergrounds Certificate
Groundwork Solent has already worked with six schools across Hampshire over the last three years to improve their grounds, including Alverstoke Junior School in Gosport in the first year, and Wicor Primary School in Porchester and Netley Abbey Junior School in the borough of Eastleigh in the second year. The third year saw improvements to school grounds at Four Marks Primary School in Alton, Shakespeare Infant School in Eastleigh and Bursledon Infants School near Southampton, with one further project to be completed in early 2008. In the fourth year of the programme, Groundwork Solent is now working with Selborne Primary School in Alton, Crofton Ann Dale Infant School in Stubbington, Calmore Junior School in Totton and Wordsworth Infant School in Southampton to enhance the quality of their grounds.
Cantell School visits to Daisy Dip and Bassett Wood
"I enjoyed today because we got muddy and cut down trees"
During June 2008 Year 7 pupils from Cantell Maths and Computing College in Southampton joined Groundwork Solent Officers to discover a little more of their local environment.
Over a two week period the pupils joined our Officers in their local park to carry out education workand
some practical conservation tasks.
They discovered the local trees, built dens in the woods and generally had fun outdoors, with team building activities. The pupils also helped Volunteers and Groundwork staff to clear around an acre of invasive Laurel.
The pupils all enjoyed the opportunity to work outdoors, in particular the opportunity to get muddy, with staff enjoying the chance to interact with their pupils outside the classroom.
"It was good to see my tutor group working together and playing"
One World Schools
During 2009 Groundwork Solent is introducing a new programme of School Outreach sessions. These sessions cover recycling, sustainability, environmental improvements and environmental science and support areas of the Science, Geography and Citizenship Curriculum.Our sessions may be either one lesson events or longer projects throughout the school term and may be adapted for all age groups. We are also able to offer bespoke outreach sessions using environmental activities to teach other subjects such as Maths and English as well as other areas of the above subjects and can support school assembly activities.
B1. Roots and Stems and Leaves and Flowers
This long project looks at plant biology and food chains in the classroom, before encouraging your class to use what they have learned to design and build a sustainable garden in the grounds of your school (cost of materials additional).
G1. Rivers, Floods and People
This single session uses practical modelling to help your class understand river structure, then moves on to look at land use, flooding and sustainable development.
G2. Waste Strategy
This single session encourages your class to look at what they throw away. Analysing the schools waste stream they will develop a waste strategy for the school.
G3. Traffic at My School
This single session asks your class to take an overview of the problems traffic causes around your school, before deciding what they can do to help
G4. Traffic at My School project
This term long project takes an indepth look at the problems traffic causes around the school and how people travel to and from the school everyday. The class will gather data and use this to create plans to reduce the levels of traffic around the school.
For further information and to book please download our information leaflet (below) or contact our office on 02392 617020 .
Communities for the Future
Communities for the Future is a project funded by SEEDA, run by Groundwork Solent in
partnership with two Secondary Schools across South Hampshire.
Using practical methods the project aims to engage young people who are currently at risk of exclusion or with low attendance or
attainment in normal schooling.
Students took part in a variety of activities including, community conservation, planning a community christmas lunch, building an archery range, and building a catamaran canoe
By offering opportunities for Young People to achieve outside the classroom in a practical environment the project aims to develop skills within the young people to take back into the classroom and forward into future careers.
The project was well recieved by the two schools, with extemly positive feedback being recieved on the pupils involved.
Our Future World
Groundwork Solent was approached by Creative Partnerships to work in Bayhouse School on their cross curricular project “Our Future World”.
The aim of Creative Partnerships is to encourage schools to brings creativity to a lesson to make it unique, and improve the pupils experience of learning.
Groundwork Solent’s role was to plan, prepare, and deliver the lessons in the school timetable, based on the book called “The Road”, it is a story of a father and son and their route of survival. The youth project officer delivered 12 sessions in the school around the theme of the book. The young people had two tasks; one was to build the safest, warmest and driest shelter to protect their team, and two was to improve the items of clothing that they were wearing, so that they could be suitable for many different weather hazards.
Ecochallenge
Groundwork Solent is working in partnership with the Field Studies Council to deliver environmental education sessions to secondary schools in Portsmouth.
Following week long residential courses at FSC centres, Groundwork Solent works with the school to develop the learning opportunities brought up by the visit in order to maximise the educational benefit of the visit, whilst exhibiting to the young people that their own local areas are equally as valuable for conservation.
Working on projects in local parks, as well as developing school grounds, pupils work on anything from organic gardening to building and surveying their own wildlife reserve.
49 Stoke Road
Gosport
Hampshire PO12 1LS
T 023 9261 7020
F 023 9242 0418
E solent@groundwork.org.uk