With so much technology available to help us get around, it’s easy to forget just how important it is to know other ways of finding your way. WiseUp has developed a range of Orienteering sessions that are designed to teach learners some of the more traditional methods of navigation. These include using a map, compass and basic directions, alongside the topography around you.
With so much to cover, our Orienteering challenges can be run as a Full Day, Half Day, or Split Day. There may also be the option to add an Orienteering/Navigation session into a Full Day of The Bushcraft Challenge (please speak with a member of our team to discuss this).
WiseUp Team Building can run events at any privately owned site. This includes school/college/university grounds, sports facilities, camp sites etc. We are not able to run events in public spaces such as parks/rec grounds.
For Orienteering, the ideal space is usually a school field and/or other outside areas roughly the size of a football pitch. If the outside of the school buildings and/or any surrounding garden spaces are able to be used as well, that would be great. For larger groups, more space will be required while groups with less students can be accommodated in a smaller space, ideally no smaller than the size of a couple of netball courts.
On the day of your event, a team of WiseUp instructors, led by one of our experienced Lead Instructors, will arrive around an hour before the scheduled start time. They will bring with them everything needed for your activity day in one of our WiseUp vans.
The team will set up the activities in your designated activity area and await the arrival of your students to let them how the sessions will work and where to go/not go.
For some orienteering activities, the students groups will stay together in their groups of 10-12. For other activities, student teams will be split into smaller teams of 2-4 in order to complete the challenges. While students are on the activities, our staff will provide input and support to the students. We would ask that during our Orienteering sessions, school supervisors help with the overall monitoring of the students. This may involve helping students facilitate any in-school road crossings, or being positioned in a location to see any areas that our staff cannot.
After the day has concluded and the students have left the activity area, your WiseUp team will pack away all of our equipment, leaving the space exactly as we found it before departing.
The day would start with a short presentation to the students about how and why it’s important to be able to find your way around different environments. Our team will let the students know what particular areas of orienteering they will be focusing on, depending on their age, length and aims of the day.
Orienteering has different activities/levels for different age groups, from Year 1 through to Year 13. This makes is a great activity for Primary or Secondary age learners.
The students will be split into groups of 10-12, with one teacher/ta or adult per three groups as a minimum whose role will be to supervise the students throughout the day.
WiseUp staff will run the activity sessions, setting out the tasks and expectations for the activities. For some challenges, the groups will be split into smaller teams/pairs whilst others will be completed as a whole group of 10-12.
The event will be rounded up with a short debrief to all students in which the WiseUp team will feedback about how the groups got on throughout the day and relate back to the initial presentation.
For our regular Orienteering days, we ask that every 30 students is allocated one teacher, ta or adult helper to supervise the 3 teams of 10-12 students for the duration of the day. This is due to our activities being designed for and risk assessed based on these numbers. Our insurance cover is based off our risk assessments so it is important that these ratios are kept.
We will provide a member of WiseUp staff for every 30 students you have booked for and our staff will not be assigned to a specific team but will circulate between all of the groups providing input and support to the students and group supervisors.
We understand that staffing within schools can often be tight. primary schools can often be tight. For this reason, a lot of Primary schools we visit ask parent volunteers or any other school verified adult such as office staff or members of the maintenance team to take on the supervisory role of the younger student teams. In Secondary schools, 6th form sports leaders or prefects can assist with taking on the supervisory role of younger student teams.
If you haven’t already seen them, please visit the Orienteering page of our website to view some great photos. There is some great information about our Orienteering challenges on there as well.
We also have some Testimonials from previous schools we have worked with for you to check out.
Don’t miss out on your ideal date!
Let us know if you would like to temporarily reserve one of our teams to secure Orienteering for an amazing event at your school.
