How does the Wild Warrior Award support the 6 core principles of Forest School?

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The Long-term Principle:

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'Forest School takes place over regular sessions with the key process of cycle planning, observation, adaptation and review which links each session together. The structure is based on the collaborative work between leaders and participants and should clearly demonstrate progression of learning.'

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The Wild Warrior Learning Journal gives leaders and participants an opportunity to plan together in a reflective manner, week by week or session by session. Included in this is the Wild Warrior Award Badge Menu, a snapshot of all 53 badges, which can be shared with participants as a way to inspire curiosity and spark areas of interest. This will generate ideas to help direct sessions and plan the use of resources and equipment meaningfully.

 

Groups can then use the Learning Journal as a way to reflect on the session and as a prompt for the forthcoming session. The reflection section can be used by leaders or participants in a collaborative manner to capture the essence of what happened, what areas of interest development, what was learned and much more.

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Alongside this, the tracker and assessment templates are an invaluable tool to demonstrate the progress and impact of Forest School on emerging skills in all areas of development, across the 3 core areas of Skills, Knowledge and Holistic.

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The Nature Principle:

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'Forest School takes place in a woodland or natural environment to support the development of a lifelong relationship between the learner and the natural world'

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The Wild Warrior framework is designed to help settings to immerse learners in nature and deepen their connection with the natural world. Included in the package are the exclusive Wild Cards, providing a range of activity suggestions to spark imagination and ideas to incorporate into sessions. 

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Advocating for the environment is an important part of the framework, with many badges focussing on sustainability and ensuring learning is environmentally conscious and balances activities with longevity of woodland environments, for example, woodland management or creating habitats. The framework focuses on using natural and renewable resources for learning.

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The Community Principle:

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'Forest School uses a range of participant-centred processes to create a community for being, development and learning, responsive to the needs and interests of participants'

 

The beating heart of the framework is a unique, participant-centred design, providing flexibility and choice to respond to learners needs and interests. Holistic badges in particular support progress in social, emotional and spiritual aspects of development with a strong sense of collaboration.

 

The Learning Journal supports leaders to plan, observe and reflect on sessions and can be used to collaborate with learners, strengthening relationships. The observation and reflection sections allow leaders to scaffold and tailor future learning and development experiences. The journal includes the Wild Warrior badge menu, which participants can use as a stimulus for following interests and ideas sharing, beginning the all important process of developing a community ready to experience, explore and learn together.

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The Holistic Learning Principle:

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'Forest School aims to promote the holistic development of all involved, fostering resilient, confident, independent and creative participants'

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The framework supports leaders and learners to link experiences together across the 3 core areas (Skills, Knowledge & Holistic). Badges in each of the different areas complement each other creating an all encompassing framework for real holistic development. Better still, the Holistic badges offer focus on a range of social, physical, cognitive, communication, emotional and spiritual development and enable you to easily track progress in these areas, which is unlike any other framework.

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The Risk Principle:

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'Forest School offers participants the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to the environment themselves'

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Using the framework provides a sound starting point to map opportunities to learners individual interests. The Wild Warrior badge menu is an excellent starting point, providing learners with the opportunity to give insight into what interests, motivates and inspires them.

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Risk taking can take many forms and the range of badges offered within the framework mean that measured risks which are encountered in physical (e.g. the Wild Warrior badge), social (e.g. the Leadership badge), emotional (e.g. the Wellbeing badge) opportunities and more can be catered for and steps of progress within these recognised using the respective trackers.

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The Leadership Principle:

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'Forest School is run by qualified Forest School leaders, who continuously maintain and develop their professional practice'

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Often, after the excitement and inspiration of your training course is over, it can be easy to fall into a 'comfort zone', sticking with familiar routines and activities. The Wild Warrior framework helps you to facilitate wider learning experiences with a huge range of inspiring badges.

 

There are over 53, each with its own activity card for inspiration. Not only this, each associated development tracker has a series of progress statements which can help you to know how to facilitate the next steps for a learner's particular areas of interest, something which can form the backbone of your practice as a leader and ensure you always feel confident in encouraging child-centred learning. 

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If you haven't yet undertaken a Level 3 qualification, there are many badges in the framework which are suitable for someone without this training and may inspire you to take the next step and become a qualified leader.

 

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