With teachers and children wishing they could be outdoors, in colleges, this might mean a day indoors. In Gilbert Elementary, you can look out the window and see a group of kindergarteners splashing on their way to the forest. These students will spend the next two hours building boats, making mud pies and celebrating the differences rain leaves in their environment.
Published at Tue, 10 Oct 2017 19:01:50 +0000
Gilbert Elementary is evidence that change can be produced in a traditional public school.
When these students leave Kindergarten, they continue to have opportunities for education.
Other Forest Kindergarten programs are being proposed; outdoor education and gardening applications are sprouting up at elementary schools; and Ridgeland High School’s STEM academy integrates agriculture in their own program. The goal is to produce a cohesive vision across Walker County that starts with Kindergarteners splashing across the playground on a rainy day.
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Rain or shine, hot or cold, the students spend half of the day in the 300 acres of forest. The concept isn’t a new one. Kindergarten after all means “children’s garden,” but in the days of high-stakes analyzing and ever-changing criteria, the name has come to mean something quite different. Forest Kindergarten is a return to the original intent. Solve problems, pupils learn to be creative and build relationships with their classmates and their environment.
The pupils are currently performing above their peers on grade level assessments, and they leave the program with creativity, the relationship abilities and grit necessary to be effective in the future.
The Gilbert Elementary curriculum is built around yearlong research projects at each grade level. Cows are raised by kindergarten students. Second grade does a plant research with partner schools from around the state. Third graders are gardeners. In fourth grade, the forest is managed by students. They use trail cameras to monitor wildlife and work . Fifth grade focuses on alternative energy and energy conservation. There is also an indoor aquaponics laboratory, the SPLASH Lab, and a recycling program.
The vision is growing across Walker County.
The school is 25 years old. There were no overhaul of the staff and no grants or benefactors, no changes in requirements in the state. With 87 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced the staff relied on hard work and donations to create the vision for the college a reality. Gilbert was named a 2017 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon School, made STEM certification from the state of Georgia and been recognized as a Title I Reward School for High Growth, all while going away from the teach-to-the-test mindset that’s so prevalent in education today.
The Forest Kindergarten program at Gilbert is in its third year.
Gilbert is home to two Forest Kindergarten classes.
Source: TPd Paying for College Feed
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