Richard

The Benefits of Unstructured Play in the Woods

The woods offer children something that no manufactured playground or structured activity can replicate: complete freedom to explore, discover, and create on their own terms. Without adult-directed activities or predetermined outcomes, woodland environments offer unique opportunities for development that cannot be replicated indoors or even in traditional playgrounds.

Misty Woodland Morning — Photo: R.Galloway

The forest provides an ever-changing landscape that challenges children’s brains in remarkable ways. As they navigate uneven terrain, climb trees, and balance on fallen logs, they develop crucial motor skills while strengthening neural pathways in the prefrontal cortex—the brain’s command center for planning and decision-making. This kind of play also engages the hippocampus, enhancing spatial navigation and memory formation. Research demonstrates that these activities help regulate emotional states by engaging lower brain regions sensitive to rhythm and movement.

One of woodland play’s greatest gifts is its invitation to take calculated risks. When a child decides whether to climb higher in a tree or cross a stream by stepping on rocks, they’re practicing risk assessment in a meaningful context. Studies show that children who engage in risky play develop better judgment not only for physical challenges but for other types of risks throughout life. This builds confidence and resilience—qualities that serve them well into adulthood.

The woods also excel at fostering creativity and problem-solving. Unlike manufactured toys with predetermined purposes, natural materials are wonderfully open-ended. A stick becomes a fishing rod, a wand, or a building material. Children must use imagination to transform their environment, and this kind of inventive thinking strengthens cognitive flexibility. When they encounter obstacles—a stream to cross, a fort to build—they must devise solutions independently, developing executive function skills that are essential for academic success and life management.

Social development flourishes in woodland settings in ways that structured environments cannot match. Forest play naturally encourages cooperation, as children work together to build shelters, create imaginary worlds, or navigate challenging terrain. When conflicts arise over game rules or resource sharing, children are motivated to resolve them independently because the play itself is so compelling. This teaches negotiation, empathy, and communication skills that form the foundation for healthy relationships.

The sensory richness of woodland environments engages children on multiple levels simultaneously. They hear birds calling, feel rough bark and soft moss, smell damp earth and pine needles, and observe the interplay of light through leaves. This multi-sensory stimulation sharpens awareness and helps children become more attuned to their surroundings. Research indicates that this connection to nature in childhood creates lasting benefits, including lower stress levels, improved mood, and a 55 percent reduction in the risk of psychiatric disorders later in life.

Perhaps most importantly, unstructured woodland play cultivates a deep relationship with the natural world. Children who spend time freely exploring forests develop an intrinsic appreciation for nature that typically endures into adulthood, making them more likely to become environmental stewards. In an era of climate change and biodiversity loss, raising a generation that values and protects the natural world may be woodland play’s most vital contribution of all.

Research Sources

This article draws on the following research and expert sources:

National Geographic (2025). “Letting kids run wild outside is surprisingly good for their brains” – Article on outdoor play and brain development featuring research from Ellen Beate Hansen Sandseter (Queen Maud University College), Bridget Walsh (University of Nevada, Reno), and Louise Chawla (University of Colorado Boulder)
2024 review of school-led green space programs showing improvements to students’ mood, activity, and peer connection
European longitudinal study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019) linking early-life green space exposure to 55% lower risk of psychiatric disorders
2018 study on declining outdoor play time in American children (Kamik Outside Free Play Survey)
Pellegrini, A. & Holmes, R. – Research on outdoor play breaks and attention to cognitive tasks
American Academy of Pediatrics (2018). “The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children” – Clinical report on play’s role in brain structure and executive function
Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development – Research on outdoor play’s influence on social and cognitive development
Medical News Today (2023) – Review of outdoor play benefits for children’s health and development

Rethinking Bloom’s Taxonomy: Why This 70-Year-Old Framework Still Matters

Recently, discussions about Bloom’s Taxonomy and reading comprehension have been circulating at my school, prompting me to revisit this framework that has shaped my entire teaching career. Like many educators, I’ve grown up professionally with Bloom’s, using it, referencing it, sometimes taking it for granted. But when something becomes so familiar, it’s worth stepping back to examine whether we’re truly understanding its potential.

When Benjamin Bloom and his colleagues published their Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956, they couldn’t have anticipated its enduring influence on classroom practice. Nearly seven decades later, Bloom’s Taxonomy remains one of the most widely recognized frameworks in education, but perhaps not always for the right reasons.

Beyond Surface-Level Implementation

The familiar six-level hierarchy—Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create—has become ubiquitous in lesson planning and assessment design. Yet research suggests we may be missing the framework’s deeper potential. The real power of Bloom’s lies not in its hierarchical structure, but in its ability to illuminate the complexity of human cognition and learning.

Consider how cognitive processes actually function in authentic learning contexts. When students engage with challenging material, they rarely progress linearly through discrete levels. Instead, they weave between remembering prior knowledge, analyzing new information, and creating connections—often simultaneously.

What Current Research Reveals

Recent studies involving primary school students demonstrate that learning activities designed around Bloom’s principles significantly enhance metacognitive abilities. However, the same research reveals an important caveat: simply categorizing assessment questions by taxonomy level doesn’t automatically improve educational outcomes. The framework’s effectiveness depends entirely on thoughtful implementation.

This finding challenges educators to move beyond checkbox mentality toward more nuanced application. Rather than mechanically ensuring each lesson touches every level, we might ask: Which cognitive processes best serve this learning objective? How can we design experiences that honor the interconnected nature of thinking?

Practical Wisdom

The taxonomy’s enduring value lies in its capacity to expand our pedagogical imagination. It reminds us that knowledge acquisition is just the beginning, that true learning involves helping students develop increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about and with information.

When we view Bloom’s as a thinking tool rather than a compliance framework, it becomes what it was always meant to be: a compass for deeper learning.

Is it a bad sign?

Back After Seven Years

It’s also been a while since my hair was that colour, or my torso that trim.

It’s been seven years since my last post here in 2018. Life has a way of moving forward, and if you’re curious about what I’ve been up to during this time, you’ll find more details on my sister site, “While You Were Teaching.” Though that site hasn’t had much attention either, it’s been updated more regularly and offers insight into my recent journey.

“While You Were Teaching” serves as my space for engaging with current educational research and thinking through ideas out loud. This site, however, will focus on the practical side of education; resources, websites, and organisations worth knowing about as I discover them. I’ll also share teaching strategies and classroom approaches that have proven effective, though I’ll try to keep any waxing lyrical to a minimum.

The world has transformed dramatically since 2018, with the most striking change being the emergence of AI technology. Yes, I’ll be incorporating AI into my workflow. While the content and ideas remain mine, I’ll use AI to help polish my writing, occasionally generate images, and assist with any coding needs. Despite legitimate concerns about AI, the reality is that I’m a full-time classroom teacher, and time constraints have been the biggest barrier to consistent blogging. AI might finally give me the efficiency I need to post more than once every seven years.

Here’s to more regular updates ahead.

Another New Chapter

At the end of June, another chapter in the adventures of the Galloway’s will come to an end, that being our adventure in Egypt. At the beginning of the month we decided not to renew our contract here at The British School Alexandria. It was a somewhat difficult decision in that we have made some very good friends here, we’re saving money and working in the Prep School has been a very enjoyable and for the most part, a rewarding experience. But there are several issues that, on balance, meant we didn’t want to spend another here.

One of the main reasons for this decision was the lack of access to high quality CPD. This is often an issue at international schools, especially small one’s like BSA. Returning to the UK will, hopefully, budget cuts aside, allow me to satisfy this particular urge, which will help me become a better teacher.

It wasn’t the only reason. The other main factor was that with a small family it is very hard to find things to do with out little guy. Funnily enough, our friends who have recently arrived from the Falkland Islands assure us that there is SO much to do here in comparison to where they have just come from. But still, for us, the difficulty just getting somewhere to do an activity is a hurdle we no longer want to overcome. The idea of being able to find an activity that doesn’t take 45m to get to and then 90m to get back from is very exciting. And don’t get me started on the quality of the provision…

Finally, and we knew this coming here, we’re not city people. We love the outdoors, fresh air and open spaces. Alexandria is not that. In fact, without travelling for at least an hour it’s difficult to escape the noise and pollution of the city.

These were the major drivers behind our decision to leave BSA at the end of the year. There’s still five months to go, but in the life of international schools notice has to be given early so that replacements can be found. Once January is over, (what is with January always seemingly an endless month, doesn’t matter where you are…) the time will fly by and we’ll be once again on the road looking for a place to call home. And that depends on a job.

How to Motivate Children to Read: Insights from Daniel Willingham

Professor Daniel Willingham on why teaching phonics remains so controversial and how we motivate children to read

Once more I have been remiss in my blogging. Without a proper schedule, I don’t see this ever changing and honestly time is ever short. But who knows.

One reason I don’t post much is that original content takes so long to put together. When I am teaching I just don’t have time and so I am going to experiment with posting different media that I think people would find useful and interesting. I will give full credit and make it plainly obvious that this is not my work.

My first effort is a podcast by TES. Quite recently they have started a series of podcasts that are pedagogical in nature and have been really interesting. This week the podcast was with Daniel Willingham. Currently, one of the most well-known educational writers who’s written books such as ‘Why Students don’t like school’ and ‘Raising Kids who read’.

This podcast deals with how children learn to read and how we can make sure that they learn to read effectively. It’s an interesting listen and well worth forty minutes of your time, especially if you are new to either parenting or teaching children to read.

Report Writing

There are many things about being a teacher which are challenging. But one of them, that has been on my mind, as with many teachers at this time of year, is report writing.

For those unencumbered with school aged children, reports are a biannual rite of passage for both teacher and student. They attempt to tell you how your offspring have been performing at school. Though the format varies from school to school reports are similar in may ways. In them, teachers attempt to say in a positive way how your child is progressing. There is a section on how they get on with other children, how they behave in and out of the classroom, their attitude and how they are performing in the different curriculum areas.

How their progress is reported also can vary. Here at the British School Alexandria, we have recently changed to an emerging, expected and exceeding model. We have a tool box which the children’s work is graded against and depending on how they do depends on where they are. I’m still undecided what I think about this system. I have a feeling there has to be a better system but honestly I haven’t enough experience to say what that is. (Historically there was a need to get away from level’s on account of the super competitive nature of the parents here.)

Writing meaningful reports is tricky. Trying to make every report personalised for every student is also time-consuming. But having become a parent who now receives school reports I am, more than ever, conscious of how I write my reports. I try to use plain language that is easily understood. I try not to use teacher speak and while I am generally positive, if Ahmed isn’t where he should be with his writing, I am going to tell you.

Report writing is as necessary as it can be painful. Once it’s done and the stress of trying to be fair and accurate is done, reports are actually a good way, funnily enough, of reviewing students progress for yourself as their teacher. (As an aside I wonder how useful parents find them?) The good news is that report time does mean that the school year is drawing to a close and summer holidays beckon.

From Progressive to Balanced: Why Teachers Matter in the Traditional vs Progressive Education Debate

I have been on Twitter a while. For most of that time I’ve been a lurker. In Canada, I did participate for a while in #CdnEdChat which was where I discovered what a great platform Twitter could be for CPD. It is amazing the amount of information that can be disseminated in 140 characters or less. Now I don’t have time to get involved in the same way as I did in Canada but still I always find myself checking out Twitter to see what’s current and newsworthy.

One of the debates that I find fascinating is the one between traditional and progressive educationalists and their advocates. I suspect this debate is not nearly as polarised as tweets on Twitter would suggest. In the past, I would certainly have described myself much more progressive than traditional in my outlook. I was someone who wholeheartedly embraced project-based learning but as I become more experienced the more I believe that we are called teachers for a reason. I’m not to saying project-based learning doesn’t have a place in the Primary classroom but rather that it is only one of the tools we should be using.

I love the idea of self-directed learning. Certainly, I think that by the time students leave school this should be something they are able to do. But at what point does this become possible? There are a whole raft of skills and knowledge that you need to be able to direct your own learning. These are not acquired by osmosis. Careful and purposeful teaching is needed if students are to gain the necessary skills and knowledge needed to direct their own learning. That is the job of a teacher.

As I mentioned in a previous blog the other issue I have with Discovery learning is that while it may be effective in some circumstances it’s not efficient. If memory serves I think it was Jared Diamond who pointed out that scholars believe writing was ‘invented’ independently 5 times in history. I only point this out to illustrate how difficult learning to write is and that if we left our students to discover it by themselves it would take a long time indeed for them to learn how to write.

What I do find remarkable is that there is a debate about ‘traditional’ vs.’progressive’ education. When I was a university, admittedly a while ago, I don’t recall any debate. It was a given that progressive, child-centered education was the only type of education that was worth learning about. (There is another possibility. There was a debate but I was such a bad student I missed it…) So it is interesting to me that there is such fervent debate about it today. In part, this is to be expected as our understanding of how humans learn deepens and cognitive science is able to impart knowledge that earlier theorists didn’t have access to.

The debate is an important one and one I will keep following with interest. My views have evolved over time. A combination of new information and more teaching experience is reinforcing the belief, that while there is a place for project-based learning, a taught curriculum is necessary if students are to maximise their potential as learners.

Maximizing Learning Time: Reevaluating PBL Strategies

I was reading this blog post by Greg Ashman and I had a bit of an epiphany.

Bear in mind I am a Primary teacher so my focus and expertise are somewhat different from my secondary colleagues. With that said I have always thought and believed that project-based learning (PBL) has a place in a teachers’ toolkit. When it’s done well there can be a lot of experiential learning going on that doesn’t happen with explicit instruction.

Lately, however, I’ve had this nagging feeling that I was missing something really obvious. Where I am teaching now we have more subject specialists that you ordinarily find in a UK Primary School. As a consequence, I have around 8 hours prep time a week. Which is amazing, it means most of my work is done during working hours and things like my reading and blogs get to be done at home. An unintended consequence of this is that I don’t have an as much contact time with my class as I would perhaps like or need. So when I read Greg’s article a lightbulb went off in my head.

The last project-based learning we did was based on Water, focussing on issues of water scarcity. It was a paired activity that involved some research, some design and a presentation to their classmates about what they discovered. My students were (mostly) engaged, enjoyed it and learned from it. It was a project that highlighted both the strengths and weaknesses of PBL (not the subject of this blog post) and it took a lot of time.

So reading Greg’s post was an ‘ah-ha’ for me in that the nagging feeling I had was illuminated. Time is a valuable commodity at school, especially here. PBL is great for many things but it is not an efficient vehicle for learning. There is a lot of learning by trial and error, a lot of “have you thought about this or considered that?” Great questions but they take time to pose, clarify and answer.

I’m not suggesting that there is no place for PBL in Primary School or indeed Secondary School, far from it. But I am thinking that my use of it as a catalyst for learning will have to be more judicious going forward. Time is a valuable commodity and if ‘learning-focused education’ is more efficient in helping students develop their thinking and progress their learning, then this will have to be a consideration going forward.

What’s with teachers and all the time they get off?

It’s often said that one of the perks of being a teacher in the amount of time off we get. Can’t really deny it, to the non-teachers I can see how it seems bonkers how much time we get off. But… of course, there’s a but… it’s not the whole story. Holidays are not holidays in the way most people think of them. In the same way that teachers weekends aren’t the same as an ordinary weekend.

I’ve tried the whole gamut of working experiences. Worked for someone, have been self-employed and have been and currently am a teacher. So I can comment with some authority on this subject.

As an employed person, your weekends are yours. You don’t have to think about anything except the weekend, family and perhaps how much you don’t want to go back to work on Monday, but that’s another story. As a teacher, you may get one day of that but then the other will be taken up in part, at least, preparing for the week ahead. So that’s one whole day a week to yourself or for your family. Added to that the fact you are completely knackered from 5 days with 30 students who are these days more and more demanding. (Now I have to hold my hand up here and say things here at the British School in Alexandria are much, much better than that…) Now, of course, teachers are better off than the self-employed but again that’s another story.

So when holidays do come around as they do they are a necessary part of R&R in order for teachers to be able to do what they do. In fact, it’s a pretty good indication of the state of the teaching profession at the moment, that the length of holidays is not a significant enough incentive to keep people from leaving in droves. Long holidays should be a real incentive but they are not.

Anyway, what I am trying to say in a round about way, is that I am on half term. My plans are as follows; relax; spend time with my family; learn a few things; spend time on my blogs; plan for next half term; get my energy levels back up to where they need to be for the next seven weeks.

Discretion the better part of valour

There are some things that you forget about teaching and what being a full-time teacher means. One of those things is how much time you spend ill or fighting illness. I don’t mean serious illness, (such as stress related illness) but the sort that results in coughs, sore throats, sneezes, and sniffles. Most of the time these can be shrugged off but on occasion, when it’s more than a cold you have to give in. It’s never taken lightly the decision to take a day off. So many variables, planning, cover, disruption, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valour and a day regrouping and resting makes all the difference from being just a body in the classroom to being an effective teacher.

The fact is many children come to school when they shouldn’t. But when both parents are working and there is no one to watch them then there is little option but to send them to school and hope they don’t get sent home. (And yes guilty as charged on this count!) What’s the answer? There probably isn’t one. I do know, though, that my current rate of infection and recovery means I will either end up with an amazing immune system or knackered and good for little else except the glue factory. You can guess which one I am hoping for.