Woodland Warriors

Woodland Warriors is a whole school initiative. It helps the children to learn about Geography in context but also develops them as citizens combining learning about the environment, community, sustainability,  ecological awareness and diversity.

 
Each child at Smarden gets a Woodland Warrior sash.  This sash stays with them throughout their time at Smarden.  When they participate in a particular Woodland Warrior initiative, they receive a badge which represents that theme.  They add their badge to their sash and create a collection of badges highlighting their achievements and reminding them of some of their responsibilities they have engaged in whilst being a Woodland Warrior.

Some initiatives we have worked together on this academic year are: whole school composting. We all learned what can and can’t be composted. All children sort their waste into the correct groups at lunchtime and snack time. Children and adults in the school take the compost to the compost area on a daily basis.

Chicken keeping- we are learning together how to look after our new school chickens. The children feed the chickens on a rota basis and also are learning how to look after them. We are learning the best things to feed them, what they enjoy doing and what they like in their environment.

Refill- How can we support our community to cut down on plastic?

Our local shop is a very special place. They, like us are very eco minded. When they recently introduced a refill scheme where you can take your old cleaning product containers to be refilled we designed the posters for their advertising campaign. The best poster got reproduced and displayed all around the village! The designer- Lauren also won a stack of eco goodies including a bird house and seeds so she can create her own corner of wildlife paradise.

Diversity and what it really means.

The local shop recently had a collection tin and the school had a fundraising page, through donations we  collected money to expand on our library's collection of books celebrating differences, representing everyone and supporting the emotional wellbeing of the Smarden School community following a really successful children's mental health week. Once we achieved our target the Eco Committee met and discussed the books that are relevant to us, alongside taking advice from local charity Folkestone Books for Change and we purchased a vast array of new books to support our learning. These are displayed for use in our school hall and corridor. 

Save the Bees!

In term 5 every class has planted wildflower seeds and seed bombs to help support the bee population of our locality. We learned about the importance of bees and their involvement in pollination. All the children have been extremely engaged in this project and are really aware of the bees in our grounds and beyond.

Sharing is caring.

One of our learning priorities here at Smarden is reading. We are lucky to have a wonderful library in school and a thorough phonics programme as well as a well-stocked reading scheme. However, we know reading doesn't just happen at school so this term we have been supported by a talented local carpenter Mike, and he has created a wonderful book swap library for us that is positioned at the front of the school. This enables us to bring in any unwanted books from home and swap them for something we might prefer. Please feel free to have a look if you are passing the school.

Future Topics...

We will also learn about the importance of plants in our indoor learning environment and their benefits.

We will plan to work alongside our parents and carers in gardening projects.

We will think about school lunches and how nourishing they are. Can we design the perfect school lunch?

We will think about the rising cost of energy and how we can work on this within our own environment.