Visit to Chester Zoo - 2nd November 2010
On the 2nd November all of our year 7 students went on a trip to Chester Zoo, for a fun and educational day out. Each pupil was given a workbook, incorporating key skills sheets from Maths, English, Science and Spanish, which they were to complete on their journey around the zoo. Pupils were split into five groups with a member of staff. Groups would journey around the zoo together; each group attended one of the discovery class sessions presented by the zoo staff, where they had the opportunity to ask questions in order to complete their work sheets. These sessions focused on one of five key areas; Classification, Evolution, Earthworks, Adaptation and Conservation.
Pupils were given guided maps which pointed out some key sections of the zoo, whilst the workbooks required pupils to attend some sections of the zoo in order to answer specific questions. Spanish sheets worked on pupils translation skills, Maths worked on mental arithmetic based on numbers around the zoo, English focused on creative/descriptive writing of animals at the zoo and Science asked pupils to examine key species and record information about their behaviour.
All the students thoroughly enjoyed this day out. This was a perfect Applied Learning activity, giving the students the chance to learn through doing in a different environment, interaction with other students and the professionals at the zoo, finding out about their job roles and how or why they chose that career path.
Upon returning to school, pupils will create projects based on the class session they went to and will then be asked to move to another group’s classroom and present what they learnt. In addition to this English, Maths and Spanish will utilise some of the skills learnt at the zoo and the premise of the visit in order to make lessons more engaging and relevant to skills.