On Monday, we took the train to Great Yarmouth where we firstly walked to the Waterways for some creative writing/art inspiration.  Students took time to admire the Venetian bridges, boats and a lovely pond complete with Monet-style lilies and fish and made sketches/notes to take back to school.

We then walked along the beach, stopping at the pier for photos and ice creams/doughnuts in the sunshine before continuing.  Lunch was eaten on the beach where we were ambushed by the local seagulls after some food!  Coupled with this, we found ourselves covered in ladybirds, which were in abundance on the seafront. The students loved their impromptu game of football and engaged in some traditional seaside activities, which included digging and making sandcastles!

After taking the train back to school, the students made sketches of their favourite scenes ready for use on Wednesday.

On day two, we explored the woodland areas of Acle, starting with a walk through the fields to Upton, where we found a secret forest and collected leaves/rubbings for our artwork in school.  We all enjoyed spotting and trying to identify the different crops in the fields - barley, wheat, potatoes, sugar beet to name but a few. 

After break we walked around the back of the school through the forest area to stop at the sundial where a beautiful back view of the school can be seen.  Students made sketches here and took some wonderful photos before heading back for lunch.

In the afternoon, we walked to the river at Acle Bridge where we stopped for a well-deserved drink/snack at a delightful converted horsebox café and enjoyed feeding the ducks which had come to see us.

It was a busy, tiring couple of days, but the students thoroughly enjoyed being at one with nature and took some fantastic photos which will serve as reminders of their visits.

On day three, we started with a nature-themed team quiz, then students were given the choice to either create some Aboriginal-style art, or do some creative writing. Students were really engaged with exploring different symbols and layering of colour to create pictures of landscapes, creatures or objects that they had encountered around Great Yarmouth and Acle. Using their photographs to inspire them, they created some amazing artwork!

Other students spent time doing “frenzied writing” about a prompt randomly selected from a spinning wheel of options. We then looked at creating kennings (two-word phrases used to replace a noun, such as “sky-reflector” instead of “sea”), then created a story that included a range of these. Afterwards, we listened to some rainforest sounds and created a short description inspired by what it made us imagine. Finally, we had some time to create a short story based on photographs taken from the first two days. The ideas and writing created during this time were so impressive! 

Later in the day, students had the choice of creating a newspaper article or a travel brochure page based on their travels earlier in the week. We also ran a scavenger hunt after lunch, with students split into teams to see which side could find all the objects from their cards first. Finally, we rounded the day off by creating some nature-themed board games and then had a game of football on the field to enjoy the sunshine. It was a busy day, but one filled with creativity and enjoyment of the great outdoors.