My Green School
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This section suggests that children attribute feelings of enjoyment to learning outside the classroom. However, their emotive accounts of lessons in the school’s green spaces also seem to be informed by the ways that the indoors and outdoors are constructed in opposition to one another within the school. For example, being indoors is associated with being naughty whilst being outdoors is associated with being rewarded. In this way, being outside is seen by the children as an opportunity to do things that they are not normally allowed to do. However, their perception of ‘freedom’ seems to contrast with the ways they use green spaces during outdoor lessons. As shown in the previous section teachers are particularly vigilant over ‘naughty’ behaviour during outdoor lessons and take extra precautions to manage how the children behave. However, in spite of this children associate a ‘realness’ with their lessons outside. They seem to associate the act of both seeing and doing with remembering. Their engagements with green spaces also do seem to encourage the children’s curiosity to see and to understand. This was particularly evident on the children’s tours. These more informal engagements with the green spaces seem important to the children. For example, two girls spoke about how a job they were given, to collect recyclable waste from each classroom, provided them with the opportunity to eagerly monitor the growth of tadpoles living in a vessel of water outside the Year 2 classroom.
4.7. Connections between home and school The outdoor terraces above ground level and the green roof provide children with access to views of the surrounding area. This seems very important to the children who said that, when they were up on the roof, they liked to see ‘not only the roof but a view’. This allowed them to situate themselves within a wider social context, as children would point out local landmarks from this high vantage points. I: [When you’re on the roof] what’s one of the things that you look at first? F: I look at the plants. I: So you look at the plants, yeah ... Does anybody look at the stuff off the roof? F: I look at the skyscraper ... F: I just look at the scenery ... F: I get to see all the buildings. Sometimes you can see Meersbrook Park This visual connectedness to the spaces and places beyond the school seemed to be important to the children, even at ground level. While the school is enclosed by metal meshed barriers, the children can see people walking in the park beyond the school. Sometimes they would recognise