Hanwell Park Academy is a new school located alongside a nature park trail system widely used by the public. The paths to and from the nature park are interconnected with the school and are accessible for all (including wheelchair accessibility). We use the outdoors and student choice to help curb student anxiety and to promote active learning. Thus, we are taking advantage of our natural setting.
EPIC Explore – Play- Innovate – Create, is a full school initiative. All students and staff from K- 8 will participate. By being inclusionary and offering students a choice in finding their passions we have found an established a culture of active learning through play and discovery learning outside. Each grade level has a developmentally appropriate design. For example, k-2 do a minimum of an hour of Exploratory play a week – with an end goal of demonstrating something they created during the exploration time. Whereas, the older grades (4-8) learn to self-select a variety of mostly out door play based activities. Each EPIC runs 4 to 5 weeks, one/two hour a week 6 times a year with staff and students learning through play beyond the scheduled EPICs. The choices of activities will include learning to play pickle-ball, art on the trails, geo-caching, beautifying the trails, frisbee golf, learning to make and edit movies showcasing our trails...etc
We were part of the Canadian Playful Schools Network (a project through the LEGO foundation and the University of Ottawa) and we shared our EPIC with over 30 other schools from across Canada. In our local area - several other schools have copied a variation of our EPIC that would fit their local circumstances. We have partnered with our school district to help host other school administrators to view our EPIC in action.
If any school or district would like to try this approach, we would be happy to provide all the resources we have created. But first, a school needs to have a willing staff and to design EPIC to fit their needs. We are taking full advantage of being so close to nature. Whereas, one of our partners (an inner city school) is taking advantage of their students able to walk to museums/ science center
