New rock climbing wall in the adventure playground: An accident waiting to happen or risky fun in a safe environment? A reflection on risk & play in schools.  

Friday duty on the Adventure playground. I was dreading it for one main reason… the new rock climbing wall.

As I walked down to the playground, I was taking a few deep breaths thinking of what I would do when students fall off and hurt themselves. When I got there students jumped up and started to climb. I opened my mouth to ask them to get off thinking of an excuse like ‘it’s too wet from the rain’ just so I wouldn’t have to deal with any incidents. But I stopped myself. ‘Let’s just see what happens’ I thought.

As I watched I decided to change my mindset. Instead of thinking of all the things that could go wrong I started to watch as everything was going right. 

However, even with this mindset I was still waiting for the usual incidents to occur that I usually have to deal with whilst on duty. e.g. hands on, cuts and grazes from falling over, using unkind words with each other etc. However, as I observed with this new mindset, this is what I saw:

• Students developing resilience. They all had a go and tried their best and if they couldn’t do it or if they fell off they jumped back up and tried again
• Kind words and encouragement. When other students were waiting for their turn, instead of telling them to hurry up, they were encouraging their friends or helping them with hints of the best rock to place their feet 
• Students practiced patience as they waited for their turn, giving the person in front enough space to enjoy their turn.
• Students problem solving. When they couldn’t work out what to do they tried something different over and over again determined to work out a way to get to the top of the wall. 

After observing for a while I realised that, for the first time this week, I hadn’t had even one person come up to me to report anyone using hands on or any of the usual complaints or incidents. This made me think;

Is risky play more beneficial for students?

Does it actually make it easier for teachers to manage student behaviour on the playground?

These thoughts and wonderings led me to do a bit of research on Adventure Playgrounds and risky play. The biggest thing that stood out to me from what I read was this:

• “A statistical analysis of serious student injuries that occurred during play was undertaken … Data was collected over a five year span…While serious injuries during play were rare, a statistically significant majority of them occurred on the fixed equipment playground. The adventure playground at the same school was found to be statistically safer.” – research by Morgan Leichter-Saxby and Jill Wood

I’m looking forward to my duty on the Adventure playground next week and have developed a new goal to find out more about adventure playgrounds and risk with play.