Out and about with Kennet Valley School

Kennet Valley School staff and pupils have made the most of post lockdown learning with multiple trips and excursions to enrich the curriculum. These included team building at Go Ape, the Science Discovery Centre, a site visit to Avebury and a residential at Charterhouse near Cheddar.

At Go Ape the Year 6 children completed a morning of team building activities, before spending the afternoon climbing through the trees and rocketing down zip wires to reach the ground again. Mrs Byford, class teacher, was incredibly impressed by the support and help that the group gave to each other. She said, “It was so inspiring to see the children push themselves to achieve more than they thought that they could. I am so proud of my class.” The children also raved about the day – Lawrence said, “I especially liked that we all worked together and helped each other all day.” Year 6 pupil Martha commented that the day was “Great for team work – we really had to listen to each other and to co-ordinate our actions.”

Meanwhile Year 1 pupils visited the Science Discovery Centre where they were given a workshop linked to living things and plenty of time to explore all the hands-on exhibitions.

A visit to Avebury enabled two classes of pupils to find out more about the important history of the site. They walked around the Avebury stone circle, took stone rubbings and the Year 2 and 3 children also visited the museum to dig deeper into the history. These visits were organized as enrichment activities for the history work that the pupils completed back in school. Noah commented, “I liked going into the museum to look at things from the past.”

Year 4 children experienced a three-day residential to Charterhouse near Cheddar. It was the first time that Kennet Valley School had used this centre.  During their stay the children went caving, rock climbing and gorge walking. They also made rockets and launched them into the air. Joanna Hogan, the Year 4 class teacher, was incredibly proud of the children. “I was so impressed by the children in Year 4. All of them pushed themselves to achieve as much as they could to beat the personal targets they had set themselves.”

Later in the term Kennet Valley will be going to the Watermill Theatre to watch ‘The Jungle Book’ before performing their own nativity plays. Emma Russell, Headteacher, said, “We try to use our local environment as much as we can as a school, but also plan extra educational visits so that all learning is enriched for our children. It is always wonderful to hear from the staff and children about the adventures that they have been on and how they will use the knowledge they have learnt in their lessons.”