Cotswold Forest School

Embracing learning through nature

Supporting learners with challenging behaviour

– A Case Study September 2006.

Working with the youngsters from a residential therapeutic school, although short, was a success for the young people involved.  We were very impressed with the progress they made individually and also the effort they put in to learning new skills and completing challenges.

They began as a pair to work on solo projects and engage in solitary play. By the seventh session there were positive signs of the pair becoming more inclined to work and play and support one another.
By the last session, there was very little prompting needed to encourage the young people to help one another.  They became a lot more conscious of the way their behaviour impacted on each other.

The pair have also become very familiar with the structure of the afternoon and the routines in place at Cotswold Forest School. This has enabled them to gradually adopt the pattern of the afternoon and therefore has let them feel calmer and safer in the woodland environment.

At the start of the session it could be a challenge to address the pair, without being interrupted by either of them.
By the last session the pair would sit in the log circle on arrival at the woodland and ask questions about what they had to do that afternoon whilst listening to the other planned activities. They accepted the routines and respected the reasons for having them, engaging in the whole day and planning process.  Its important to note that right from the start of the Forest School sessions, the boundaries were kept very tight, communications were delivered clearly and concisely.  All in order to maintain a feeling of order and safety for the youngsters.

Something which has been noted after considering information collected from session observations is that the young people have demonstrated a pattern in their behaviour, confidence and enjoyment of the project. This pattern shows a period of acclimatisation at the beginning of the sessions consisting of fairly neutral careful behaviour followed by a period of testing boundaries and experimenting with the structures after becoming more accustomed to the staff and the site.
This was nearly always followed by a period of improvement and either a return to their initial behaviour or a development and increase in appropriate behaviour beyond what was shown on the first few session.
I therefore believe that both the youngsters would benefit from a longer period of forest school sessions, possibly including a transition element- between school terms, where they could extend this development and confirm these changes to become a more permanent and positive part of their behaviour.