Pupils embracing outdoor learning
Pukehina School pupils are rightly proud of their new bush school. Opened recently, the bush school brings an outdoor learning experience to the doorstep of the kura’s 16 students.
Principal Indra Thomas says the off-site bush school was introduced last year as one way of increasing attendance at the school.
“We had low attendance and we thought, what can we do to build our attendance rates and build wha¯nau participation within the kura?”
A relief teacher, Stacey Marr, also ran the Puaka Bush School at Matata and, during the second half of last year, pupils visited it once a week.
“They participated in outdoor activities and survival skills, taking risks, being resilient and we found that our attendance increased,” says Indra.
“Then we found that our wha¯nau wanted to find out what the bush school was all about so they went down there.”
Indra says many of those who were interested hadn’t had much previous involvement with the school.
“They really got involved in the activities and loved it and so they started interacting with the school more. The relationships between our school and our community have really strengthened and our attendance has really increased as well, which is really cool.”
The bush school activities had an impact on other learning areas.
“Our focus last year was writing and we tried to get our children to write, but they didn’t have the experiences to write about. Bush school gives them those experiences — they go to bush school, experience working outside and team work, and all those really soft skills, and the next day they would come in and write some really good pieces.”
The benefits led Indra to look into the possibility of creating a bush school closer to home.
“We thought, we’ve got a really awesome environment out there and we thought, what can we do to utilise this environment effectively?”
With Stacey’s help, they decided to give it a go and the new bush school was officially blessed and opened recently.
Indra says the acronym PROUD has been adopted to embody the learning and interaction between pupils that happens at bush school — positive, respectful, outgoing, unique discoverers.