Primary school pupils get to grips with learning as £50,000 park facility opens

Lower Fields Primary School in Bradford is believed to be the first in the country to have its own purpose-built kinaesthetic learning park.

The new 50,000 facility will be used by pupils to carry out sports, drama and other physical activities for curriculum subjects.

Kinaesthetic learning is a technique where pupils are taught through carrying out physical activities rather than simply being told about a subject in a classroom.

The school's headteacher John Edwards believes the approach can motivate children to love learning.

The learning park is a large rectangular open space enclosed by fences and trees with a roofed wooden platform in one corner and a door leading into a metal container room where indoor activities take place.

Each year group at Lower Fields will spend one week a term in the park on a series of themed activities which will each cost 2,000 to put together.

The school's six and seven-year-old pupils used the park to learn about Florence Nightingale in lessons which received funding from Sovereign Health Care – a not-for-profit health organisation based in Bradford.

The organisation's chief executive Russ Piper said: "The story of Florence Nightingale was totally brought to life for the children through the learning park.

"The container became the hospital at Scutari in Turkey where she worked and the children were greeted by similar conditions that the soldiers would have encountered: bed pans, straw and cow dung.

"The children acted out being nurses, cleaned the hospital, used old-fashioned methods to wash bandages and learned about how Florence cared for the soldiers.

"They also received a letter from Florence's parents detailing her life and experiences.

"As well as being exciting for the children, I really got the impression that this style of teaching was an effective way of learning about a well known historical story".

Other themes for the rest of the academic year include children in the nursery learning about colours and older pupils studying Alice in Wonderland and crime scenes. The park will also be opened up for pupils from other schools in the city to use.