Posted on: May 4th 2018
At Norfolk House we aim to engage and challenge children through enriching the curriculum with real life experiences and trips. Teachers are constantly innovating in order to find new and interesting ways to support the children in building academic knowledge and understanding and developing our Core Values.
School trips take the learning outside of the classroom and there is nothing quite like the school journey to really help children gain experience, through facing a range of challenges that support personal development. Pupils at Norfolk House know each other very well but residential trips, for example the upcoming visits to PGL and France, where the children live with each other, help to develop their interpersonal skills and help them to become better leaders, as well as building trust and respect.
I have been fortunate to lead a wide range of excursions in my career and have always seen that children who may not be the most confident in the classroom can really excel on residential visits. Resilience, self-esteem and self-confidence are all built through the opportunities and challenges these trips bring, which in turn can help support relationships back at school.
Residential visits can significantly contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and development of skills. Having the opportunity to study the natural world, science, humanities, arts and language outside the classroom is inspirational, making the children’s learning meaningful in a real-life context. Exposure to adventure activities and sports skills can form the foundation of lifelong interests, as well as promote positive attitudes to children’s health.
The children and their teachers are looking forward to their respective school journeys next week and the valuable opportunities they provide and I am sure they will all come back with some wonderful stories to share.
