Yr6 Pupils
Problem Solving
A lot of what Year 5s and Year 6s have been doing in the Project has revolved around survival skills and problem solving. The latter has been a recent focus and majored on key lifeskills:
Being a functional team member
Demonstrating care for one another
Listening to suggestions
Listening to adults
Listening to instructions
Remembering details ie tasks/safety
Working hard ... always
Developing mental stamina
A lot of the exercises presented to the pupils have been 'pure' problem solving / teamwork ones; some have been built around a survival theme; one or two have been borrowed from Royal Navy Admiralty Interview Board / Royal Marines Officer Selection procedures. I make no apologies for this.
Much of the 'problem solving' has taxed the pupils; this has been good. They have been forced to negotiate, compromise, and listen to others to simply get the task done in the required time. Their desire to complete the tasks has been increasing week upon week but we are not naive enough to think they are changed pupils just in a few sessions! However much has been achieved - mainly a realisation that there is such a thing as learning to tackle problems in a better way. Also a major element has been that they accept the outdoors as a 'valid classroom', and they expect to use it to help them understand other aspects of their school learning culture.
The Spider's Web
The Science of Survival
There are five main habitats on the school site: hedge, parkland, garden, woodland-copse, and waste-scrubland. Year 6s are adopting one of these habitats to do an in-depth study of everything they find in their locality and what they find out by research: reading, use of the internet facilties in the school, and by listening to Mr. Howard's teaching.
The main purpose of this is to teach research skills but also classification, zoning, identification, and that all-too-important OBSERVATION. Ultimately we will add the information to our long-standing scenario which is.....
Five of you are sailing north in a yacht off the west coast of Scotland.....
It is Autumn, and you are one day out of port and not expected in the next port (which is home) for another five days. It is very stormy. You run aground on submerged rocks and the yacht smashes to pieces. You all make it to shore by swimming and/or wading, although two are injured: one has a suspected broken leg; the other badly injured ribs.
Before jumping into the water you all managed to save some things that you thought might be useful. When put together this is what you all saved:
One set of wet weather clothing
Two working cigarette lighters
30 metres of rope
A folding pocket knife with a sharp 5 cm blade
Two sails
Three tins of baked beans
A waterproofed first aid kit
As you scramble ashore it starts to rain; you noticed just before you left the wreckage of the yacht that on the chart (map) of the coast the nearest settlement/town/village was 50 miles (80 kms) to the east on the other side of a 4,000 ft (1300m) mountain range. You can now see this range of mountains. It has snow on it.
You (as you are not one of the injured) look around the area to see what your new 'home' is like: some areas of (conifer) forest, a stream tumbling down from steep rocky hills, and what looks like some old forgotten rubbish tip where someone has thought about farming the area but had given up. You notice that there is virtually no flat land.
It is 2pm. It gets dark in less than two hours.
What do you do..........?
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THIS SCENARIO CAN BE FOUND IN THE 'SURVIVAL' SECTION OF THE MENU.
CAMOUFLAGE
One of the key aspects of survival is camouflage....either wanting to be seen - or not wanting to be seen. The environment around you is full of colour and you must 'see' these colours, and understand how to use it to blend in with the background - or build something to help you be seen against it - perhaps to be rescued.
In the picture above Mr.Howard is briefing us about an exercise which will get us to build a camouflaged 'hide' or observation post. He has given us a list of ten key rules for camouflage....we don't yet have to remember them all! They are:
SHAPE ...change the human shape; crouch or lay down
SHINE ...have nothing which will reflect light - or 'light-up'.
SHADOW ...make sure the sun or moon does not cast your shadow across the ground, 'giving the game away'.
SILHOUETTE don't stand on high ground to outline your body shape against the sky.
SMELL ...toothpaste, deodorant, food smells all carry a long way on the wind, and can be smelt miles away in natural environments.
LIGHT ...see 'colour' (below))
MOVEMENT ...don't move!
NOISE ...don't make any! - it's the biggest mistake people make.
ASSOCIATION ...do not have anything around your camouflaged area which will give the game away - no litter, no scrape marks on the ground where branches have been dragged to cover you up, no equipment - in fact no 'clues' at all !
COLOUR ...natural colours only - but make sure they are the right colours for the surroundings - don't use dark green camouflage on dry grass in the middle of Summer - it's all very light! Break up colour - don't have large areas of the same colour. Last point - there's more black in landscape and urban colour than we think.
Building a camouflaged hide out of brushwood
Campcraft
