At Morecambe Bay Curriculum we are always seeking to support teachers in pursuing their passions and Lynn Reddy from Greengate Juniors is certainly passionate about the coast. Lynn was one of our co-design teachers from 2024, where she worked with Dr Suzana Ilic from Lancaster Environment Centre to create the resource for primary geography. You can find an overview of the resource here and further supporting resources are available for members on the MBC Moodle, accessed via the website.

For many local children, especially those in Barrow and Walney, the coastal environment is part of their day-to-day lives. However, we know from our work across the North-West coast that many children and young people do not engage with these fantastic spaces, despite living so close to them. By linking educational visits to the beach with curriculum objectives, we can potentially spark a relationship between the children and their environment, leading to feelings of ownership and care over it.

Lynn has had lots of experience of taking her class to the beach and embedding outdoor learning in her classroom practice. She wanted to share that experience by offering a joint trip to the beach for her school Greengate Juniors and George Romney Primary. She reflected:

‘Working with another school, class and children gave us all the opportunity to consider the activities and learning that little bit more. The initial plan was for more experienced staff to advise and show less experienced staff how to use our local beaches for geographical learning; in reality, we worked together to plan the best experience for the children.’

The session on the beach involved a wide range of activities including independent exploration, mapwork, tide-line treasure hunts and shell identification. They even created their own ‘false-perspective photos’, working with each other and their surroundings to ‘trick’ the viewer.

As ever, this was all underpinned by our MBC Head, Heart and Hands philosophy. Lynn explains:

Head: pupils developed their knowledge of key geographical processes, human and physical which shape our landscape. They used and developed their mapping skills and gained knowledge of local species using identification keys - science. All the time their vocabulary and oracy was enhanced by conservations around their work.

As well as the learning on the day, the lead up and follow up activities encouraged their learning further. The pupils were involved in locating the beach, planning the route and risk assessing the day.

Heart: fieldwork engenders a great personal connection with their local environment. We have found that this encourages interest, care and responsibility for ‘their’ coastline. Many children commented about returning with family, had ideas of how to support the beach ecosystems and have related issues on ‘their’ beach to topical environmental issues in the media.

Hands: pupils engaged in practical activities on the beach, developing their skills in mapwork, observation, recording data and analysing findings. They were able to present their work to others and have started conservations about creating a sustainable future.

In addition to the formal curriculum learning, the children had fun! The collaborative approach between the two schools involved ‘getting to know you’ activities and older children supporting younger children with well-being and learning. The positive impact of a day outdoors away from the traditional school system that places so many demands on children was reassuring to see. They were engaged and chatted freely about their tasks with other children and adults. Staff were able to identify children’s strengths, particular those who struggle in a classroom and may not always get the opportunity to show these. Though our focus was geography there was also room for ‘incidental learning’. The children were happy and asked thought provoking questions – some of which have encouraged them to start their own independent learning journeys.

Roxanne Bennett, the teacher from George Romney with whom Lynn collaborated, reflected on the experience:

‘George Romney thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to learn alongside the children from Greengate. They benefitted from the sharing of knowledge and skills and learning from their peers. Our children enjoyed the variety of activities that had been planned and these kept them fully engaged throughout the day. Despite this being a local location for a trip, many of our children had not been before so this was a great opportunity to show them the local area and what is on their doorstep. During the trip they continued to develop a range field work skills as well as using technology to support this. We are keen to build this learning into our geography curriculum in the future and would happily collaborate with other schools in the future.’

The work in the children’s geography books and the children’s comments on the day are proof enough that taking their learning outdoors is so important. They developed key geographical skills but more importantly, many will now return to ‘their’ beach and encourage others to do so too.