Reflective practice CPD and bringing nature-based education into the curriculum
Dawn Sanders, research consultant
Staff at the Chelsea Group of Children, a special needs primary school in London, are engaged in a reflective journey where the experience of nature has become the heart of the curriculum.
In this workshop, Dawn Sanders (facilitator), Libby Hartman (School Director), Chiara Secci and Andrea Terganov (teachers) and Sheila Read (speech and language therapist), will share the journey we have gone through as a creative partnership between Gardens For Learning and Chelsea Group of Children (CGOC) to create, and question, nature-based learning environments both in and out of the classroom. We will share the reflective frameworks and training programmes we have developed through the project and the 'dokuwiki' we have created to engage in wider educational dialogues. A reflective outlook has informed the heart of this process. Representatives of the staff of CGOC will be co-participants in this session.
More about Chelsea Group of Children
The Chelsea Group of Children is a small, independent special needs school in South West London.
- "The world is changing too quickly to use the past as our only model for the future. In every decision we make within the school we ask ourselves the questions, what is best for the child? What is needed to prepare for the future? It is a simple exercise, which provides clarity and directs our actions. The only true evaluation of a learning environment is the measure of academic and emotional growth experienced by each child within that environment."
- Libby Hartman, School Director
Gardens for Learning is run by Dawn Sanders, an experienced botanical educator and researcher based in London, UK. She has held education positions at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Chelsea Physic Garden and The Natural History Museum, London, and research positions at the National Foundation for Educational Research and King's College London. Dawn has facilitated workshops, often as part of a team, in countries throughout the world including India, China, USA and Australia. She has also featured on the BBC 'Pod' science series and written educational resource pages for The Guardian newspaper and textbooks for Scholastic. Dawn received a Royal Society Millennium award for leading a team working on the botanical knowledge and memories of older Moroccan women, in London and Morocco. Creative partnerships are her preferred model of working.
back
