Can Your School Survive On A Desert Island ?

Our guide to running the increasingly popular ‘Desert Island’ off-timetable week. This is a fabulous way to unite your school with a common goal, motivate your staff and pupils, and encourage enquiry-based learning at your school.

The Premise:

Your school are ship wrecked on a desert island. Some of the crew have been trained in basic survival skills. Can they pass on enough knowledge to be able your pupils to survive ? Will your pupils be rescued ?

Although this a primarily science focused idea, other curriculum areas can be introduced too (eg. “document your adventure” – literacy)

Background

Your whole school embark on a specially chartered ship en route to (an event / location of your choice). One night, a terrible storm results in tragedy . . . . the cafeteria has to close early. But even worse is yet to come when your vessel runs aground on a desert island.

Next morning, a brief exploration reveals that the island is uninhabited. It is roughly circular, with a diameter of 5km. The interior consists of dense foliage, and in the middle, there is a high peaked hill from which ominous puffs of smoke occasionally appear. Mobile reception is ‘zero bars’ and access to facebook is totally out of the question !

Can you survive ? Will you be rescued ?

The school divide into teams to focus on providing the things you will need over the coming weeks, months . . . . . years ?

Activities Include:

• Drinking: Water purification and desalination (by filtration and evaporation). But what could we use as a filter ? And how will we generate heat to perform evaporation ? How much water does one person need a day ? Which team can produce the most pure water ?
• Eating. What are our dietary requirements. How will we get the proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals that we need. What is safe to eat ? What is dangerous ? Can we prepare a simple meal ? Will it be hot ?
• Power Up Your Island. Can we generate electricity. Can we build a wind turbine ? There were some solar cells on the ship and they were used to heat the swimming pool. Can we adapt them for use on our island. The ship also had an old electric motor – can we adapt this to generate power ? Can we salvage a battery ? How would we charge it ? Could we make a battery ?
• Design & Construction: Shelter building, plus making simple items we will need (eg shelves, tables and beds)
• Heat / Light: Methods for starting a fire. How will we cook ? How will we see at night ?
• Communicate. Can we communicate across the island (mirrors using morse code). Or a simple electrical morse code generator over wires. What is semaphore – how could we use it. Can we send and receive messages successfully (ie. Test these methods to make sure they are capable of transmitting messages successfully).
• The rescue committee. What could we do to help our rescuers find us (brain storm some ideas and put some into practice eg mirror signalling, build a large SOS sign, message in bottle etc). Can we make or repair a radio to receive information from the outside world (are our rescuers looking for us ?). Can we build a telescope from bits salvaged from the ship.
• A day trip to the coast: Finding food, build a solar still, shelter from the rain and wind.
• Navigation: Measure distance and map the island. Use co-ordinates to locate items. Build a compass. Can we establish the position of this island within the world using the stars, our compass and other clues.
• What can magnets do for you ? Build a generator. Make a compass.
• The Cooking Crew. Can they plan a nutritionally balanced meal and prepare it ?
• Pipes, Pumps and pistons. Use a variety of techniques to get water to where it is needed.

Other Ideas

• Document our ordeal by writing a diary. Make a video journal.
• Entertainment Committee. Can we make musical instruments, decorate them and prepare a performance to cheer our crew-mates along through the dark nights ?

Cross Activity Ideas

Introduce a competitive element across the event. Which team produced the most pure water. Who generated the most power. Did any team communicate successfully ? Award prizes for the most creative and industrious teams.

Bring various elements within these activities together to perform useful functions.
· eg. Hook the wind turbine to the generator. Use the generator to power the radio or lights. Can we hook the generator to a rechargeable battery.

· Can the ‘fire and light’ team provide enough energy to actually cook something ?

Organisation:

Ideally, the event takes place over 4 or 5 days, and each activity lasts for a whole day (this allows your activities to be more adventurous)
Each member of staff leads one activity, and the activities are repeated on each day of the event.

So, for example:

300 children and 10 staff + 5 helpers over 5 days.

So we need (for example) 15 activities, with 20 children on each activity each day

Each member of staff chooses just 1 activity (eg. “Island Communication”) and runs it 5 times (on each day of the event). This reduces the set-up and planning burden on staff, and helps raise the quality of each individual activity.

Each child gets to choose 5 activities (one for each day).

Allowing the children to choose their own activities is important – it lets them direct their own learning, and helps ensure that everyone will find something that they enjoy regardless of their learning style.

Ideally – all activities will be open to all pupils across the school (mix-aged range teaching is fun and helps form new friendships and cross-school links).

Results

At the end of the week (or at the start of the following week), bring everybody together and announce some results.

· Did we survive
· Who was rescued
· Who had the best ideas
· Who contributed most to our safety and welfare
· Did any of the teachers cry out “I’m a teacher . . . . get me out of here” !

General Tips For Successful Off Timetable Events

Finally then, our usual tips for getting the most out of your off-timetable event

· Start the ‘buzz’ early. Decide on the basic structure of your event, and get the event fixed into the school calendar early. The details can be fleshed out later.
· Send a letter home, explaining the vision for your event. Ask for ideas and for contributions. (Relevant objects or resources could be loaned. Parents may have contacts in business that can provide resources or sponsorship).
· Parents are often very willing helpers and want to show-off their hidden talents. They will often offer to run activities. Help them develop ideas, and offer (perhaps) to keep group sizes low, and restrict courses to appropriate pupils. easyPLAN can be of tremendous help here.
· A number of national organisations can provide speakers to schools, and your local Development Education Centre (DEC) may be able to provide information local speakers who could come to your school. Would your local university provide speakers ? Are you lucky enough to have an adventurer (or even a very well travelled person) living locally ?
· It may be helpful to have a dedicated budget or fundraising ideas to pay for specific resources and outside speakers/performers.
· Get the press interested. Prepare a press release with photos and a named contact for local newspapers and radio.
· Can Governors help (with money or arranging sponsorship)
· Approach Education Business Partnerships
· Consider ways in which partner schools can be involved e.g. secondary, primary, overseas

Good luck. Please feel free to follow my blog posts and get more inspiration and ideas here on www.offtimetable.com