MORE than 70 educators and students from all over the South West attended the ‘Awaken the Spirit of Discovery in Science Outside’ event held at Forest and Beach in Beeson.

The event was part of the Festival of Social Science held in partnership with Plymouth University. The day consisted of the first showing of a film specially created for the festival, featuring three inspiring ways of teaching Science outside the classroom and including a Forest School session filmed at Modbury Primary School delivered by teacher Andrea Moore.

A panel consisting of Sue Waite - associate professor in Outdoor Learning at Plymouth University, Ian Blackwell - Natural Connections, Alice Goodenough - research fellow, Phil Waters - director at I Love Nature and Pete Moore - director at Forest and Beach took questions from the audience on enhancing children’s learning outside the classroom.

Participants then took part in different outside workshops promoting science learning outside and took a pack away with ideas to use in their own settings. The event was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and was free for attendees and feedback was overwhelmingly positive, ‘A very well organised event with plenty of information to take away’ wrote one teacher.

Pete Moore commented: ‘It was fantastic to have so many educators attending this event from all over the South West. The feedback we had was fantastic and it was lovely to hear that the attendees were going back with lots of ideas to implement exciting learning opportunities for children outside the classroom.’

Sue Waite said: ‘The Economic and Social Research Council festival of social science is such a great opportunity to bring research and practice together. We all learned from each other and helped to spread good evidenced practice in outdoor learning.’