The Transformative Power of Residential School Trips

BSG Year 11, 12 and 13 students spent five days in Yangshou this month engaged in a variety of outdoor activities specifically designed to challenge students, introduce new skills, develop leadership and build teams. While the week was hugely enjoyable for everyone, there are compelling reasons why residential experiences are an important part of individual students’ development and well-documented connections between these types of experiences and academic success.

By engaging students in activities that they may not have tried before, we are encouraging them to take (safely managed) risks, operate outside their comfort zones and ultimately to experience the reward gained from successfully completing a task they thought they may not be able to do. This can be directly transferred to the classroom, where attempting a new project, developing a new skill, may appear daunting at first. For example, language learning inevitably involves an element of being outside students’ comfort zone: ‘What happens if I make a mistake?’, ‘Will I look foolish if I get something wrong?’. Students who are prepared to ‘have a go’ almost always make faster progress with language acquisition than students who prefer to remain quiet for fear of what they perceive as failure.

Through activity-based problem-solving activities, we teach students the value of strategic thinking and multi-phase solutions. Building a raft from raw materials involves students understanding what they have available, having a clear idea of the outcome required and requires them to consider the steps that build upon each other to get from start point to conclusion. This process is almost identical to that involved in solving mathematical or scientific problems. In maths problems, the first question to address is ‘What do we know?’ or ‘What information do we have?’ and the next consideration is ‘What is the question asking us to produce?’ – then our students apply their understanding of mathematical processes to these two key questions to produce their answer.

Language, literacy and communication skills develop during residentials under the careful guidance of BSG teachers. Students are encouraged to express their thoughts and feelings, to communicate with each other to solve problems or simply to take time in a different, and possibly unfamiliar setting, to engage with each other. This develops a richness of vocabulary and expression and can improve journal writing, creative story compositions and enhance students’ expression through creative and performing arts. By providing rich and varied experiences to BSG students, we provide them with references to incorporate into writing, art, music and dance.

By providing residential experiences for senior students early in the academic year, BSG very purposefully builds a senior team spirit that will be essential as the year develops and, inevitably, some academic and examination anxieties begin to appear. BSG students will have appreciated the benefits of teamwork first-hand and will understand that by working together, and asking for help when required, everyone benefits, and this remains as relevant to examination preparation as it does to scavenger hunts in Yangshuo. Academic success happens because of these experiences, not around them.

As we move through the school year, we expect our students to fondly remember their residential experiences, but importantly, to apply the skills and understanding they have gained to their learning and to enhance academic achievement because of them.