England's forests: Stage your own woodland games

When you're in a forest, you don't need to spend ￡11bn, build a velodrome or have creative disputes with Danny Boyle to host your own Woodland Games. Just lay in supplies, draw up a schedule of events, and scrabble around for a few items on the forest floor. It?is, however, probably best to warn the children in advance that?the Queen is unlikely to be?available to parachute in for your opening bash.

List of supplies

‧ Performance-enhancing treats, obviously, and some fizzy drinks to spray over the victors.

‧ The stopwatch app on your phone (if you can find it).

‧ Paper and pen to keep track of results.

‧ Medals and prizes for everyone. Make medals the night before: tin foil and gold pens for the Very Good Parents out there, cut-out cardboard for the rest of us. It goes without saying that the prizes have to be for everyone because It's The Taking Part That?Matters …

‧ Finally, add a few plasters for scraped knees and elbows, sunscreen, some kind of painkiller (not alcoholic), children, and you're off. Let the games begin!

Olympic athletes spent the run-up to the London Games on strict diets and in rigorous training, supported by a team of psychologists using sophisticated techniques to help them achieve their personal best. But we believe the same effect can be attained by distributing Penguin bars and demanding the children build their own obstacle course, while shouting orders and getting increasingly irritable as they regularly stop to fight/eat/moan.

Possible obstacles

Stick slalom: poke a long line of?sticks into the ground for competitors to weave around.

Picnic rug tunnel: selflessly hand over your rug for the little terrors – sorry, brave athletes – to crawl under, just like those netting things they use in the Territorial?Army.

Hardwood hurdles: balance a thin stick across two logs to create a hurdle to jump over, or to crawl or limbo under.

Monkey bar swing: locate a tree with a strong, low branch from which competitors can hang for a count of five, or as?long as their little arms can manage.

How to play

Youngest sets off first; gaps between start times should vary according to age and behaviour. Older ones cannot just walk over the slalom. Or the picnic rug. Or?the younger children.

By now the obstacle course may have been destroyed, after competitor no 3 (no names, please) used part of the stick slalom to beat up competitor no 2. Both continue to deny accusing the other of having farty breath. Did Mo Farah have to deal with this kind of thing? Let's move swiftly on to the pine cone shot put.

How to play

Everyone helps collect a stack of pine cones (this may prove tricky if you are in a deciduous forest – try tiny logs instead). Now draw a large circle on the ground with a stick. Each competitor gets three pine cones: the aim is to throw the cones inside the circle from a distance of the judge's choosing.

Note: Any pine cones aimed at another competitor will result in instant disqualification and loss of computer time for the next week. In the case of a tie, it's perhaps best not to suggest a sudden-death shoot-out.

Pine cones redistributed? Everyone still in one piece? It's time for a spot of gymnastics, with points for artistic impression awarded at your discretion, so you can even the scores up and keep everyone happy.

How to play

Find a fallen tree trunk that can be safely walked along (with a helping hand if needed). How far can our brave athletes go without touching the woodland floor? Extra points for arms held out straight. Or little jumps. Or a?sweet song.

Note: Stilts and piggy-backs are banned. Unless piggy-backs are offered in a co-operative spirit, in which case well done for working so nicely together, kiddywinks!?

This eternal classic pre-dates agriculture as a human occupation – probably. What child can't be distracted for half an hour by the?competitive joys of racing sticks down a handy forest stream? Just make sure you're in a position to?ensure they don't throw?themselves into the?stream, too.

How to play

Do we really have to explain? The classic version should take place on a bridge, but if none is handy, ask a kindly passerby to act as judge and jury?downstream of where the sticks are being launched. You could also take the concept a step further by encouraging the kids to make their own sailing boats ...

How to build a bark boat

Find a dead log with its bark peeling off, and carefully break off?a piece. Use a splodge of mud to attach a light stick as a mast, then use another splodge to attach a leaf, feather or thinner piece of bark as a sail.

Now all you need is a small stream or large puddle to float the?boats in: if it's not windy, you?may have to blow ... If a boat?sinks, try moving the mast?and sail around on the bark; if it still won't float, you have created a bark?submarine!

Never mind the kids; by now you must be cream-crackered, with interest in the finer points of the?competition waning just a little. The perfect time for a?long, long jump ...

How to play

Summon all your remaining energy reserves to make a gigantic leaf pile. The bigger it is, the more time you'll get to sit and rest while your kids jump into it and throw handfuls of leaves over each other, before (touch wood) descending into fits of giggles while agreeing that it doesn't really matter who wins these games, anyway.

Note: Should the time of year, or type of forest, mean that there are not enough leaves for the long jump, there's always mud ... But?only if the person responsible for laundry is first guaranteed a?large drink/breakfast in bed as?compensation.

Always the most eagerly anticipated event in any Woodland Games. With tempers frayed and sugar levels low, there's just time to let competitors know that the overall gold medal will go to the child who runs/walks/skips back to the car fastest. Anything to get them back quickly, especially as it's starting to rain ...

Ideas based on the Forestry Commission and Woodland Trust's Nature Detectives adventure booklets.

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Thoughts on selecting books for reluctant readers in key stage 3

Selecting a book: engage reluctant readers by choosing books to suit your year group based on their life experiences. Photograph: Alamy

With Ofsted placing more emphasis on reading, some schools may find themselves having to shift the focus of their schemes of learning to include more class readers – where the whole class covers and reads a book together.

Over the years – teaching English to lower-attaining key stage 3 students in mainstream schools, special schools and pupil referral units – I have found the class reader to be a great tool. A well-chosen class reader helps structure my schemes of learning, provide an 'in' for students who typically say they don't like reading and writing and for students who have often emotional and social issues, serve up opportunities for discussions they might find threatening through more typical mentoring one-to-one sessions.

The first thing I look at when choosing a class reader is how accessible it is in terms of the language used. Most lower-attaining students at KS3 will tend to have varying difficulty with decoding polysyllabic and irregular words, being reliant on sight vocabulary and basic phonics to get by. There are a wide range of simple readability calculators available on the internet (just search for 'readability test').

I tend to use SMOG (short for Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) which works by counting words of three or more syllables in three 10-sentence samples from the start, middle and end of a text, finding the square root of the total count before adding three to calculate the school year equivalent and five for the chronological age equivalent.

The SMOG method is fairly respected but there does need to be a note of caution as it only tests decoding. I have found, particularly so in mainstream schools, that lower-attaining students are increasingly arriving with functional decoding skills – as evidenced by assessments such as the Salford Sentence Reading Test – yet when they undertake a comprehension test, they are around three to four years behind peers.

It is also important to consider the vocabulary used in the texts, both in terms of specific words and how they present as a whole.

Over the years I have sometimes come unstuck with highly-engaging books such as Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce, Brother in the Land by Robert Swindells and even the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling because the language has proved endlessly difficult. It is OK, desirable even, to have really challenging parts to a text but if it becomes too much of a persistent struggle, students with a history of struggling will switch off.

I believe strongly that students should simply experience and be enriched by English as well as be coached in the 'mechanics', especially for those who struggle with the more technical side. As a result I give lots of consideration into what books might really hook in my classes. This naturally tends to vary from year 7 to year 9, as students grow from starry-eyed children into moody teenagers. I find it also varies within a year group depending on their life experiences and level of 'street-wiseness'.

For Y7s, I find Roald Dahl's many hits including Danny Champion of the World, Matilda and his childhood autobiography, Boy, to be both age-appropriate and appealing. I often use all three together, reading one in full and dipping into the other two, as a way of comparing works of one author; looking in particular at the relationship between an author's real life and fictional lives.

Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian is another Y7 favourite. Although with Y7 the danger always lies in rocking up with a new class reader, with weeks of planning in place, to hear the much-feared line: "Sir, we did this in year 6 with Mrs Smith…" Usually followed with: "She was such a cool teacher, she was really nice… and she let us play games."

For Y8s I have long used Skellig by David Almond and Holes by Louis Sachar (particularly useful for teaching non-linear narrative structure), which are commonly used across many schools. The great thing about these reads is they tend to feature characters of a similar age, characters the students feel they can relate to.

More recently I have also used The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne and Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo – also using Goodnight Mr Tom if they haven't read it already. Again, these books are great as a trio because they cover a similar topic which I title 'Voices of War'. This can then be linked in with factual accounts and poetry.

With Y9s I find at this point their perspective is changing quite rapidly from older child to young teenager. They are naturally more likely to reject stories perceived as 'babyish' – and it only takes one or two to proclaim this for their hyper self-conscious peers to follow suit.

The flipside is at this age they are still very young in other ways and caution is needed not to serve anything too hard-hitting, or likely to invoke the ire of parents. I have found A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines to be timelessly appealing, often surprising myself with just how engaging students find it. This novel also has a play script adaptation which students love and because parents frequently recall reading the book during their school days, it adds further encouragement.

I have also used Bend It Like Beckham by Narinder Dhami and Stone Cold by Robert Swindells to retune the tougher crowds into reading – and in doing so, also bring them into higher-level activities looking at character perspectives, context and inference.

With the majority of the above book recommendations you will also find they come with a film adaptation. I am sure this will draw criticism from the more purist, dare I say it puritanical, advocates of English teaching. I half-expect Michael Gove to honour me as a bad example. However, I find that a film can be used as an excellent carrot for reluctant readers, with students working much harder on their reading and follow-up activities for five to 10 minutes of film at the end of the lesson. It also provides opportunity to compare the two versions, considering the demands of the different formats, different audiences and so on.

Finally, with every class reader I use I am keen to make sure that they have enough meat on the bones to trigger some discussions around real-life issues. I have come to believe, in my nearly decade-long work with students who have complex social-emotional needs, the best way to challenge and grow their perspectives is through the medium of story. Put simply, the stories I choose are about them but not about them.

Fortunately we don't have to look hard. We can find some excellent themes across the books mentioned above, from the more jovial works of Roald Dahl which also cover big issues such as loss of parents and adult cruelty to more obviously meaningful texts such as Skellig and A Kestrel for a Knave which I uncover new lines of inquiry with each reading.

With some books, particularly so I have found with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, the subject matter is almost too weighty to be taught in isolation and sufficient time needs to be given to teaching 'the real story behind the story'. Of course, this could be made easier if synchronised with history schemes of learning. In particular I have found Flares of Memory by Sheila Chamovitz, a collection of memoirs based on childhood experiences of The Holocaust, to be a powerful accompaniment to John Boyne's fable.

In recent months, to try and nurture independent thinking through discussion, I have attempted to draw on the theory and methodology of Matthew Lipman's 'Philosophy for Children', known commonly as P4C. This is still very much a work in progress.

Stephen King got it right when he said: "There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words – the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book." I doubt I will be selecting one of his stories to use with my students anytime soon but I think this is great advice; find a good read, with powerful content, that you like as much as the children do, and celebrate it.

Matt Grant is an SEN Coordinator at Thornleigh Salesian College in Bolton. He has worked there for three years, previously working at a special school and PRU. Matt has his own website, Humans Not Robots, and tweets as @HumansNotRobots?.

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