Over the last few years, the Club has been working with schools to introduce orienteering to pupils, often through the School Sports Organisers who work with a collection of schools in an area. This has included a range of support mechanisms from after-school and online training sessions for teachers, teaching the basic skills and sharing simple activities that can be undertaken on the grounds, to direct sessions with classes. Some schools have been able to have their grounds mapped, and many of the area groupings now have sets of controls and cones to enable them to run training sessions and competitions.

As an example, the Club recently ran a session for two Year 3 classes (7-8-year-olds) from St Helen’s Primary School in Ipswich. The session, actually held at Sidegate School’s large grass field, lasted 1 hour for each class. After a warm up exercise of jogging patterns around the field to warm up the body, the brain was warmed up with an exercise needing the pupils to run to cones at the 4 compass points. This helped instil the concept of which way was North to help when there was a need to orientate a map.

The main exercise made use of the Go4Orienteering Scheme, where a grid of numbered controls become the controls to visit. With a simple map of the start, 7 controls and the finish, the pupils, working in pairs, need to work out which cone to visit and write down the correct number on their control card. This was then checked against a master and if an error had crept in, the course was revisited, perhaps with an adult providing a level of help.

The session ended with a fun obstacle course – when running carefully across a ‘bridge’, over some stepping stones, touching a tree, weaving through a forest and leaping over a ‘pond’ helped introduce a few of the features that might be control sites in a future event for them.

The mix of working the brain and body seems to suit a wide range of abilities through the class as the emphasis is ‘self-challenge’ – getting things right for you and your partner rather than being the fastest in the class. The supporting staff could see the value and were soon working well with their students. The three SUFFOC volunteers were kept very busy spreading their help across a class of 30 pupils.

Seeing the lead teacher at our next Summer Series event was an added bonus as she felt it was worth experiencing an event herself.  Hopefully this work with schools, allied to the Ipswich Park-O events and the summer series with their introductory courses provides a pathway into the wider sport. It may be that the experience is ‘logged’ and in due course when other opportunities present themselves, they will remember the fun of trying orienteering and try it again.

With this in mind, the Club will continue exploring opportunities to work with schools and introduce the sport to young people. If you are a teach or parent and would like to arrange a session with us at your school or create an orienteering map of your school grounds, please contact myself at coach_simon@suffoc.co.uk.

Simon Hooton