Alexandra Primary School
Educational trips, visits and learning off-site comprise an essential part of the school curriculum at Alexandra Primary School. Successful trips provide memorable learning experiences and enhance the children’s education in ways that are not possible in the classroom. The school is committed to providing school visits as a positive tool to develop pupils’ independent, investigative learning, and to build their experience of the local and wider world. All trips and events should serve to enhance and enrich the curriculum, providing children with memorable experiences that will aid learning about a topic or theme or help children understand more and remember more of the taught curriculum.
We consider the following questions when planning trips and visits.
“Children have been learning about the Sikh faith, including Sikh places of worship, in RE. This trip will give them the opportunity to see first-hand some of the things we have been learning about as well as explore their local community.”
“Children compare their beliefs with those of others and reflect on their own experiences”
“Children investigate the significance of religion in the local community”
“Children explore sacred texts and their importance”
“This links to the work children have been doing about ‘belonging’ to a group (or religion) and why this can be very important to people.”
“Children will be learning about ‘langar’ (the sharing of food) in Sikhism and exploring the importance of this act and how it compares to the tradition of sharing food as part of worship in Christianity and other religions. They will also be learning about other places of worship so will be able to make comparisons.”
“Experiencing the ‘real life’ element of what they have only learned about will give children a deeper understanding of the important part a gurdwara plays in the lives of local Sikhs (as well as people who go there for a free meal).”
“Their knowledge at the moment is all theoretical. Once they visit the gurdwara in person, they will be able to link their learning to what they saw and experienced and will remember the visit in the coming years. Many of the children pass the gurdwara often so will now be able to make the connection with it and their own lives. Children can take the experience with them and make lots of connections when they are learning about other faiths in the years to come.”
“Children will move from using secondary sources to learn about a topic to seeing and using primary resources. They will be able to use their experience of the visit to answer questions about faith, places of worship, respect, the role of religion in their community in a more in depth way than if they had just learned about the Sikh faith and gurdwaras from videos and books.”
Learning more, remembering more
