ARU Research Report 2019

The Up Project 15 happy atmosphere…Whilst this might be something that they’re apprehensive about, they’ll be supported. There’ll be adults there who will look after them and support them and model what to do, and that if they ever feel they need to come and ask something, they can come over to us. So, making sure that whilst we want them a little bit out of their comfort zone…it’s still an environment that is unknown but, yeah, supportive.’ (Teaching staff) ‘I’ve learnt loads from going from the first time I went, now being able to model and go in and have conversations with these people and model it and demonstrate to children and make them feel at ease, so it’s given me a lot more confidence. Now you walk in and you do feel like you’re walking in to a group of friends, so yeah, that helps the children as well.’ (Teaching staff) What Are the Benefits for Children? The visits for both children in focus groups and teachers were recalled with positivity, and described as a mix of opportunities for learning, fun and change. The experience in its entirety was captured perfectly in a metaphor drawn by one of the children, which reflected the journey from new environment, to learning and to growth: ‘I think it’s like reading a short book, it’s a bit like going on an adventure, because you go somewhere new, you meet new people, you do a couple of things with them, and then it’s all over and it happens again the next week…Yes, it was a mixture of a fiction book and a non-fiction book, you learnt a few things, but it was an adventure going there, everything was an adventure, but you learnt things on the way.’ (Child 8) Outside the Box Learning The Up project presents an alternative model of learning, moving away from typical ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ styles and contexts. Teaching staff explained the objective of this ‘out of the box’ experience was to expose children to situations of ‘real life’ and ‘real people’, providing the opportunity for new insights and diversity. ‘whilst the fundamentals of learning to read, to write and maths are very important, we also felt that other skills were equally as important to develop and that would be things like tolerance, patience, compassion, empathy, independence, confidence. So that was the mindset behind it, if you like, developing those life skills in a very real context…It started with, what do we want our children to leave with? The staff were very much, “Well, I want them to leave as being independent. I want them to leave being compassionate.” Not just, “I want them to leave being able to read and write.” So, from that, we created a curriculum that gave the opportunities for that to happen. This isn’t just, “Well, it might happen because it just does,” we need to provide very real context for things to happen.’ (Teaching staff) The feedback from children suggest these ambitions were achieved. Children were keen communicate that through the experience, and the realness of it, they had learnt. They had learnt through the life experience and history the older adults offered, and they described this learning as easy, derived from simple conversations with the older adults: ‘Don’t tell the teachers this, but I actually think you learn a little bit more than what you learn at school…Because if I lived duringWorldWar II and I want to tell you about it, they actually experienced it so they knowmore.’ (Child 8)