Students at Cedar Grove Elementary School took their learning to new levels during a Week Without Walls event that saw the school’s 245 students enjoy a total of 50 field trips between May 30 and June 3.
The field trips ranged from touring local farms on foot to exploring Vancouver Harbour onboard paddle-wheelers.
“The idea is to really promote experiential learning,” Cedar Grove principal Barry Krangle said. “So a lot of the teachers had done various studies and were culminating with experiences that enriched those studies.”
He said one group that toured Vancouver Harbour looked at the industrial and economic sides of the harbour and then biked around Stanley Park to get a sense of the area from a different point of view.
“And we had two classes do exchanges with Madeira,” Krangle said, noting the aim of those field trips was to get students familiarized with both ends of the Coast.
“Most of the Madeira kids hadn’t been to Keats Island and a lot of the Cedar Grove kids hadn’t been to Skookumchuck [Narrows] or Francis Point Park.”
Another class paddled Gibsons Harbour in large canoes and learned about the Aboriginal history of the area.
“It was wonderful. Every teacher was involved in all sorts of different kinds of initiatives that completely tie in with the goals of the new curriculum as well,” Krangle said.
At the end of a busy and exciting week of place-based learning that was at times hard to coordinate, Krangle said several students were already asking when they could have another Week Without Walls experience.
The Gibsons principal plans to take input from this year’s event and use it to move forward with an even better Week Without Walls program next year.
The effort is something Krangle said he started while principal of Madeira Park and then took with him to implement on a larger scale at Cedar Grove this year.
“I’m just really passionate about outdoor and experiential learning, and it was a way to get support for everybody to just get lots of those kinds of outdoor and experiential learning experiences,” Krangle said.
He’s heard that a few other teachers on the Coast have adopted the idea for their individual elementary school classrooms and also taken students on Week Without Walls field trips recently. He’s glad the idea’s catching on.
“I have talked to lots of teachers about the program,” Krangle said. “I just think it sounds like a fun thing to do. A week without walls? Let’s go!”
