Jane Acton nature workshops

Aim 1 ‘to assess and investigate the impact of nature workshops on children’s self esteem, confidence and emotional literacy’ Aim 2 ‘to explore how best to evaluate this practice in future’ Aim 3 ‘to reflect on practice and determine how nature workshops can be developed further for children’

Measure Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) Generally measures symptoms Informant Parents and teachers, completed before the sessions started and at the end of all the sessions. Description 20 items categorized into 4 subscales: emotional difficulties, behavioural difficulties, hyperactivity and peer problems. Informants indicate how much they agree with a statement. Total symptom and subscale scores calculated

SDQ Impact Measures adaptation Parents and Teachers (as above) 7 items that ask informants to rate the extent to which symptoms distress them and impact on home life, friendships, classroom learning and leisure activities. Impact score calculated

SDQ Pro-social Measures resilience Parents and teachers (as above) 5 items that measure kind and helpful behaviour. Informants rate how much they agree with a statement. Pro-social sub scale calculated

Emotional Literacy Checklists (ELC) Measures resilience Parents, teachers and children 25 (child and parent) or 20 (teacher) item categorized into 5 subscales: empathy, motivation, self- awareness, self- regulation and social skills. Informants are asked to indicate how much they agree with a statement. Overall emotional literacy and sub scales are calculated.

Mood rating scaleThe child is offered 4 different ‘faces’ to tick, decorate or draw in a way that best suits how they feel at the beginning of each session:  Satisfaction ratingThe child is offered a scale (a 10cm line) from to  on which to indicate their satisfaction with 4 parameters: were they listened to? how important was what they did?, how much they liked what they did? and how much they would like to do differently next week?

Name of child Date What worked well for child? What didn’t work well for the child? What were the child’s strengths? What were the child’s difficulties? What might I need to check up on/do more of in the next session? Other issues;

C1C2C3C4C5C6 Were you listened to? 10 9 How important to you was what we did in this session? 109 How much did you like the session? 10 Overall how much would like to do more of the same? 9910

We managed to receive complete sets of data on each child from their parents, teachers and the children themselves. In future we would like to do some qualitative research which includes asking children open ended questions. It would be good to find a more tangible way of recording the children’s satisfaction with the sessions than simply marks out of 10. Perhaps drawings, sound or video recordings could be made by the children. We found the SDQ system quite time consuming compared with the ELC. Also the ELC was the most relevant in helping us to measure how well the sessions built resilience in the children.

Session reviews Weekly reviews Mixed groups Collaborations Feedback reports Common Assessment Framework

We have successfully assessed and investigated the impact of nature workshops and have measured improvements in self esteem, confidence and emotional literacy according to the children, parents and teachers. Without a control group we cannot conclude this is solely due to these sessions. The sessions were well attended, the children enjoyed what they did and would all like to do more. The quantitative measures we used generally worked well and qualitative methods would also be good in future.

Time spent in child focussed sessions prepared specifically to suit their learning styles clearly supports improved self esteem and emotional literacy. The model outlined here worked well. It might be used with families in the future. Feedback to parents and teachers on individual children might be useful in future where assessments are required. More research on a larger scale, conducted by an independent body, would allow us to measure the impact of nature workshops as a potential tool for improving well being and learning over time. We would also recommend research on the impacts of nature workshops where perhaps some children have much more than 22 hours on a regular weekly basis.