With the growing importance for educational institutions to improve their student support services, many schools are looking to create more space to facilitate quality support sessions.
Asfordby Hill Primary School in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, chose school building manufacturer Cabins for Schools to design and install a 7m x 4m Outdoor Eco Classroom with a 3.8m partition. Their brand new additional building, 'The Pod', now provides two functional rooms for a wide variety of learning and support activities. From ELSA support, Autism Outreach meetings, music tuition and Lego therapy sessions, the staff and students at Asfordby Hill now enjoy the versatility of their Outdoor Eco Classroom and have found it to be hugely beneficial for the whole school. “The main reason we wanted an outdoor classroom was the lack of space in our school,” said Nicola Bailey, Assistant Head & SENCO. She added: “Now, with The Pod, the two rooms of the cabin are used for different purposes, simultaneously without any noise or disturbance from the other side.
In the smaller room, we have 1-1 interventions, music lessons, ELSA sessions, therapy sessions as well as for when social workers visit our school to meet with certain children. And we use the larger room for lots of different meetings such as when Autism Outreach are here as well as other outside agencies as well as for our Lego Therapy and reading groups” Jo Purkis, Emotional and Literary Support Assistant, commented: “Before we had The Pod, I was all over the place. I had a box which I would cart around the whole school! Sometimes, sessions used to take place in the library but this was open plan and so not ideal for the children as they need to have a safe spot where they can open up. Here in the cabin, we have a really nice safe space. I can have all of my resources out and the children can come and help themselves to colouring or craft materials and we can just sit and make things and have a chat. It's great!'”
