Teachers have been bowled over by how an overhaul of playtime fun has helped kids concentrate in class and boost their wellbeing.
St Thomas & St Anne's CE Primary School in Hanwood, near Shrewsbury, has brought in a mud kitchen, wooden teepees, obstacles and more to give pupils "an amazing hour of play, every day".
St Thomas & St Anne's CE Primary School in Hanwood, near Shrewsbury, has brought in a mud kitchen, wooden teepees, obstacles and more to give pupils "an amazing hour of play, every day".
Category
đź—ž
NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm Hannah McGrath, I'm head teacher at St Thomas St St Anne's Primary School in Hanwood.
00:04 And I am Miss George, Lisa George, the senior teacher here and we are here to talk about Opal today.
00:11 We've started a journey with our playtimes really about opening up the opportunities that the children have
00:17 beyond just a concrete slab. So we really wanted to rework our environment, give children a huge range of opportunities
00:25 from problem solving to explore the vocabulary that they can use, working with different groups of people, different ages.
00:32 The children have totally embraced everything that is on offer and are doing a marvellous job of using things,
00:40 playing with things in ways that we just didn't expect them.
00:43 Obviously you can still see you've got your traditional playground in the background.
00:46 We have, yes.
00:46 You've got all the wood and dairy over there, you've still got your football field for the Kingswood Ozo Football.
00:52 There's so much more going on here.
00:55 We've really worked on the grounds and what opportunities they have.
00:58 So normally children say, "I'll go to school and I'll play football today" or "I played with the skipping ropes."
01:03 But it's all about traditional plays and when you think back to when you were a child, what was those most memorable moments?
01:10 And actually these are things that they can take with them and our activity levels of our children have really skyrocketed,
01:16 which not only is helping our children be more active but also their mental wellbeing,
01:21 their social wellbeing is really important to us here.
01:24 And as you can see today, they're all really happy and engaged and physically literate.
01:29 Have you noticed a difference in the classrooms?
01:31 Yeah, huge difference actually.
01:33 There's been a really big impact on the way they come in, ready to learn.
01:37 They've obviously got all that energy out and also less emotional needs really.
01:42 They come in ready and prepared, don't they?
01:44 Yeah, and I think what's really good with what we're trying to develop is the children risk assessing
01:51 as they go so that there's things that are out here that potentially could be risky.
01:56 But we work with the children and we have a play assembly at least once half a term
02:00 where we introduce new equipment or we introduce new ideas and the children think about what are the potential risks,
02:07 but also what are the benefits and how could we use this equipment or this new, you know, the push chairs for example,
02:14 or the hoover, how can we really use those to benefit our play?
02:16 The children have really embraced that opportunity to think about what could be risky and how can it be safe.
02:24 And we hear that language, the children are using that language all the time on the playground.
02:28 And how can they communicate with each other to make it safe and work as a team.
02:32 So lots of, you can see they're all engaging in different year groups, different ages and really playing.