The Wolds Federation Residential visit to France
23 – 27 March 2015
Five staff and thirty six, very excited, children from the Years Five and Six of
our three federated schools (Middleton-on-the-Wolds; Bishop Wilton and
Beswick and Watton) left bright and early (at 4:30 am!) on 23rd March, for our
biannual, residential trip to the Chateau Chantereine, in France.
The aims of our visit were:
A) To enable the children to understand more about, and experience some,
French culture.
B) To give the children a sense of purpose when learning French in school.
C) To enable the children to hear French spoken by native speakers and to
practice speaking the French they have learned with native speakers.
Our journey incorporated a break for breakfast at Peterborough and then we
arrived at the Eurotunnel by lunchtime. Thirty minutes later we were in
France!
Our first visit, en route to the Chateau, was a couple of hours exploring
“Nausicaa” a fascinating sea life and ecological centre in Boulogne-sur-mer.
Following this, we arrived at the Chateau around 5pm. Once the usual fire
drills and welcome meeting were finished, the children had dinner and went to
their evening activity – “Scrapheap Challenge”
The next morning, after breakfast, we set off for Rouen. Once there we
visited, and compared, the Gothic Roman Catholic Cathedral and the very
modern “Joan of Arc” church, which was completed in 1979.
The children learnt about the effect The Plague had had on the citizens of
Rouen at the time; they also learnt about the architecture and heritage of the
town.
Then they had some free time to practice their French whilst shopping.
After lunch we went to the “Neufchatel” cheese farm. We learnt about the
traditional process of making the cheese (all delivered in French!) and looked
around the typically French farm.
In the evening, back at the Chateau, the children’s activity was “Mini Olympics”
On Wednesday morning we walked into “Criel-sur-mer” - the village in which
we were staying. Once again the children were able to practice their language
skills by shopping in the local Post Office and patisserie.
In the afternoon we visited a chocolatier, where the children learned about the
whole production process of chocolate, from growing it on the cocoa
plantations, right through to the final products ready for sale. The chocolatier
also produced some special chocolates for everybody to happily sample!
On return to the Chateau the evening activity for the children was Fencing and
Problem Solving.
Thursday saw us in Arras, visiting the emotive Wellington Quarry site, where
allied soldiers, from both World Wars, lived during the conflicts. Here, the
children learnt about the conditions at the time for the soldiers, how they lived
underground -the ingenious engineers had even managed to provide the
soldiers with electricity and bathrooms! We viewed artefacts from the time,
together with drawings, notes and carvings that the soldiers had etched into
the walls whilst waiting to go into combat.
Following this we continued on to Vimy Bridge and were shown around both
the British and German trenches. The children learned about conditions for
the soldiers at the time and viewed the impact all the shelling had had on the
landscape. The day’s excursions ended with a visit to the impressive Vimy
Bridge Memorial Monument.
That evening, back at the Chateau, as a starter for their dinner, the children
were offered the opportunity to sample frog’s legs and snails! Most of them did
try them and a lot of them really enjoyed them!
The final evening activity was the ever popular and eagerly anticipated disco! A
great time was had by all on the last night of our visit!
On Friday, everybody was reluctant to leave, but it was time to return home.
There were two stops made on the return journey, to eat lunch and for a
“comfort break.” Everybody arrived home tired, but happy, in the early
evening.
This trip was a wonderful, valuable and memorable experience for our children
and all our aims were met.
Should anyone be considering planning a residential trip abroad, we
have found the following things useful:
 Take DVDs to watch on the coach!
 Participating in a week long, residential, trip obviously entails enormous
good will from the staff involved, as they, necessarily, are “on duty”
twenty four hours a day – which is tiring! Therefore it is a good idea to
try plan your week away just before a school holiday!
 Providers do need to communicate well with staff both before and
during the visit.
 Pre–visit checks should always be encouraged by the provider and
carried out by the staff.
 It is a much happier experience for all concerned if the provider you
choose pays as much attention to the staff’s needs as they do to those
for the children. After all, staff are generously giving up their own time
to lead the trip and do require certain essentials i.e. separate bathrooms
from the children, chairs to sit on whilst they are in the dorm corridors
at night, waiting for all the children to go to sleep, before they can go to
bed themselves and, definitely they need adult sized beds!
 During our last visit we did not allow the children to take any electronic
games or mobile phones, but encouraged them to bring books and
puzzle books for the journey.
 Also, for the first time, on this visit, in consultation and agreement with
our parents, we did not allow the children to bring their own cameras.
Instead, all the staff took a school camera. We downloaded each set of
the photos taken onto each of our school servers on our return. The
parents then sent in USB sticks and we copied all our photos onto to
these for them. The result was, all the parents received 300+ good
quality photos of our visit and the feedback was that they were all very
happy with this arrangement.
 Finally, if anyone thinking of undertaking such a visit would like to have a
chat beforehand with someone from our staff team we would be happy
to meet with them!
Sheranne Low
Visit Leader
Middleton-on-the-Wolds C.E. V.C. Primary School