Woodland Structures

I'd previously never thought too much about the structures of woodlands but I can now see the different structures and how they work and how they are different in the species that they have - because of the particular structure they are.

Woodlands can be looked at in reference to both their horizontal and vertical structures.

The horizontal structure of British woods is looking at how dense the woodland is - how close together the trees are.

Trees may be wild and cramped together forming dense woodland in contrast, when woodland is closely managed and planned, trees can be evenly spaced.

The location of the forest can impact on the denseness and distribution of the trees; alongside environmental aspects including: drainage, moisture, soil type and whether it is flat or on a slope.

Woodlands can change relatively quickly following rom large trees dying and areas being cleared to then have saplings flourish; creating different areas within the woodland.

Wild / cramped together

Evenly spaced

Evenly spaced with gaps

Uneven with gaps

Looking at the vertical structure of vegetation, working upwards the first layer – often taken for granted, is the ground layer. This layer, which is less than 2cm from the ground, consists of mosses, lichens, ivy and fungi. Alongside this on the woodland floor there are rotting leaves and vegetation; a microhabitat for invertebrates – including woodlice and centipedes. We have all of these at our forest school site – but you may needs to look closely! There are some lovely examples of fungi on the tree stumps of the cut down trees – it smells very mushroomy! Children should be reminded of health and safety when exploring; some fungi is poisonous and some children can have an allergic reaction to ivy.

The next layer up is commonly called the field layer – which comprises of vegetation between 2cm and150cm. This layer is home to ferns and flowering plants, including wood anemone, horse tails and lots of different grasses. It can often be thought of grass as all being the same but it can be a lovely activity for children to identify similarities and differences between the different grasses in our forest school – ‘Forest School Vision’ needed!

Above the field layer is the shrub layer – ranging from 1.5 metres to 4.5 metres. This layer is composed of shrubs which are happy to grow in limited light. These include: blackberry, elder, hawthorn, hazel and field maple – these can all be found in our Forest School area. Alongside these could be sapling from canopy trees. This layer provides a wealth of shelter and food for a wide-range of mammals, insects and birds.

Finally the highest part of the British woodland is the canopy layer – which is roughly anything over 4.5 metres. This is the realm of the dominant trees: oak, ash, beech and birch (for example). These tree receive the maximum amount of light available and therefore control the climate beneath them in the lower layers of woodland.

Play in my sessions

Anyone who has ventured into my inside classroom at school will see that I enjoy being creative, having fun and making things as enjoyable and memorable as possible - even if I appear to be on the crazier side of creative!

Running an initial 6 week pilot has allowed me to explore the use if play for both learning and development. I have attempted to implement it in a variety of ways.

Games:

• "   Ice-breaker games/ check-in activity to ensure children feel part of the greater group and feel safe that we are all there together.
• "   Exploring the area and boundaries through using 1,2, 3 where are you? Children enjoy the challenge of finding good hiding places and beginning to get to know the area really well. This is a game that has been a huge hit with the children I am working with. They ask to play it every week and although there are other things that I have wanted to try with them, I have gone with it and they have enjoyed it and included it in their reflective blog posts most weeks. It has also been great for the children to realise that the game has become harder for the seekers each week as the trees and bushes have gone from small buds to full leaf.
• "   Find me games – 5 seconds to find something yellow. Again this game makes the children look closely at their surroundings as they have a mission to find something.

Imagination and creativity:

Quiet space: we decided to find our own quiet / sacred places within our forest area. The only rule was that it should be a small distance from each other. The children enjoyed exploring different places and then began to decorate and make their sacred, and often imaginative, places special to them. I had no idea that they would get so into this. Their imaginations really took hold as doorbells, doormats and hanging decorations were fashioned to make their place their own. Following on from this we spent between 3 and 5 minutes (I didn’t time it) sitting in our quiet space and listening to and looking at nature. This provided much needed quiet time for my very chatty and loud class who were all then completely buzzing about what they had experienced. Following on from this activity I received a letter from a parent saying how much calmer and more organised their son was after Forest School. The children have really learnt about respecting each other’s places and looking after and keeping organised their own spaces and understanding a little more about their culture and society through acting out all through imaginative play, as well as learning more about their natural surroundings. 

Entering our Forest School: each session we leave by the fire exit from the classroom and walk over to where our FS shed is going to be erected (hopefully soon) and then instead of heading straight over to the base camp, we enter via a woven path exploring the nature we see along the way: identifying species, holding branches and passing messages, sometimes health and safety ones, on along the line, and also noting how things are changing and growing across the seasons. Along the way we pass, “O’ Mighty Tree” – which is a tree with a lovely gnarled and interesting trunk; that looks like great eyes watching over the forest. We always stop and bow down to O’ Mighty Tree and ask permission to enter and repeat when leaving at the end of the session. Again the children have really bought into this and enjoy my silly rhymes that they repeat to the tree. This is creating empathy with the forest and learning about respect through play. Through my modelling using our imaginations for a sacred tree it I feel it is almost like giving the children permission to make believe.

Evaluating research carried out in relation to Forest School

So in theory Forest School sounds ideal for developing the children of today to become all round great learners – but where is the evidence?

There have been numerous studies that have taken place around the benefits of Forest School; here are summaries of two of them.

A Critical review of research and literature exploring the relationship of the child with the natural world – Rowena Kenny 2010

·         growing dissociation of children from the natural environment ·         tension between biological drives and the socio-political contexts of modern culture ·         Nature Deficit Disorder ·         renaturing of childhood Kenny’s research is to explore why there is a need for Forest School. She goes back to research humans’ inherent biological need for nature – including our need for a connection with our environment. Western society has progressed to an extent that children don’t have the opportunities to develop this relationship, in the way that they did historically, and will subsequently not be able to see the need to preserve the natural world as they don’t have that connection. Alongside this, she discussed the need for children to be re-naturalised and hypothesized that common childhood issues including obesity and ADD/ADHD could be due to NDD – Nature Deficiency Disorder.

The benefits of a forest school experience for children in their early years – Sam Massey for NFER 2005

This study was to get an all-round view of the forest school experience and what they were gaining from it. It was also to ascertain if forest school provides skills and confidence for a child’s lifelong learning and to gain an insight into the types of learning experiences being offered and the relation to the EYFS. The study was thorough and used a variety of methods for the research including interviews, questionnaire and videos of the children during a Forest School session. The resulting findings from the research highlighted that forest school programmes: evolve from the needs of the child and includes the child’s interests; develop good self-esteem in a climate of small achievable steps; provides a real context for developing language; provides the practitioner with an alternative view of the child and further insights into a child’s particular development; are beneficial to a child’s all-round development, particularly in the areas of personal, social and emotional development, and language and communication; underpin the principles laid down in the foundation stage guidelines; have been very well received by all those involved in it; provides opportunities for the children to take risks, solve problems and employ thinking skills; complements learning in the classroom and can be transferred. It was an interesting insight also into parents’ reactions to seeing their children in a Forest School session where they, “expressed their wonder at the level of independence and confidence.” Overall this was a positive piece of research backing up the benefits of the whole ethos of Forest School.