No escape for Freddie “Fingers” Thompson or stealth teaching

Last Thursday myself and Dave were lucky enough to have a whole day off site with SW, however no matter how fun that sounds, the prospect of no lessons, going where we want (within reason) doing what we want (within reason) sometimes can be rather tricky to think of interesting, engaging and fun things to do all day.

Fortunately in my previous role I had the chance to take some students on a Murder Mystery Treasure Trail around Exeter City Centre, and it was a fun day out for everyone. Unfortunately due to the current COVID situation it was not advisable to spend the day walking around a city centre, luckily there were many more options to choose from, including one that tours Dartmoor.

So we had our days activity ready!

Our mission: to investigate a series of clues and eliminate suspects from our list to find the “specialist” hired by Freddie “Fingers” Thompsons gang to help him escape Dartmoor Prison!

With a set of directions, decoders, a list of suspects, the minibus, waterproofs (it is Dartmoor after all) and our cunning the three newest recruits to the National Crime Agency Running Deer division were on the case!

The premise is simple, you follow the directions solve the clues and at the end of the day you have your prime suspect, and it took us all day but everyone enjoyed it. We had explored everywhere from Princetown to Moretonhampstead, and everywhere in between.

As fun as the day was, was it just an excuse for a jolly for the day? I don’t think so!

Because as much as there was no English or Maths lessons that day what there was is what I like to call Stealth Teaching. For example; to solve clues we had to complete quick mental arithmetic, we had to solve anagrams, we had to communicate with each other, problem solving, patience, turn taking, map reading, time keeping, adapting to new information and situations, all of these skills are vital for our students to process and live full independent lives, and these were taught, supported and encouraged without a lesson in sight.

So if you were to ask SW what he learnt from our day out he might reply with some random piece of knowledge about a church we saw or a town we visited, but he probably wouldn’t talk about any of the above mentioned skills because thats the key to Stealth Teaching … they don’t even know they’ve learnt it, but they have, and when they need to use those skills one day in their lives they will be able to, and maybe, just maybe, SW will think back to the day he spent with myself and Dave pretending to be NCA agents and having a laugh and smile and think “perhaps they’re not as weird as I thought and they actually taught me something”

Nevertheless, it was fun, we found our suspect, some skills were developed and what more can you want from a jolly around Dartmoor?