The Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust is actively involved with education from the primary level right through to post-doctoral work. Local pupils are often engaged in our river conservation projects and PhD candidates work with us on research projects.
We offer a range of educational activities to schools, including our educational river table, life in rivers invertebrate identification and river field trips.
Our award-winning education project, Rivers2U, began in 2018 and was made possible with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund http://www.heritagefund.org.uk. Thanks to National Lottery players we have been able to work with schools and communities along the Rivers Wharfe, Swale, Ure, Nidd and Ouse, and their tributaries. The project enables us to engage with, and educate children and communities about everything to do with Rivers, from understanding the geography of rivers, the water cycle, wildlife and habitats, to how rivers work, flooding, sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) and natural flood management (NFM).
The Rivers2U project was continued in 2022 with funding from Postcode Local Trust, http://www.postcodelocaltrust.org.uk and until March 2023 with funding from Yorkshire Water‘s Working with Others Community Benefit Fund.
Thanks to everyone who helped us raise money through our Christmas Online Auction and the Big Give Christmas Challenge in December 2023! Thanks to your support we can continue with our education programme for schools in 2024.
If your school is in the catchments of the rivers of the Yorkshire Dales, please contact [email protected] to enquire about booking the Rivers2U mobile classroom to visit your school in 2024.
We ask for a small voluntary contribution, in the region of £70, towards the running costs of the van, for each visit.
Our fully fitted, wheelchair accessible mobile classroom, allows us to bring hands-on education about rivers, to everyone.
Our mobile classroom Rivers2U van is fitted with:
Visits are linked to the National Curriculum and can be adapted for different key stages, offering:
We come to you! No coach costs!
Our Rivers2U education project has engaged with:
If your school is in our catchment area, and you have any questions about working with us on an educational project or you would like to make a booking for the mobile classroom, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
”The introduction was great and the children were really engaged and learned a vast amount in a short space of time. It was great how the leader had a vast amount of knowledge about wildlife and could talk about it really well to the children. ”
”Thank you for an outstanding outdoor learning experience for our students. We covered a range of topics perfect for their AQA GCSE course.”
– Geography department
” We really enjoyed the river table – the children were so enthusiastic about it!”
– Ms. Gardener (Y3/4 teacher)
“The day was extremely well organised, interesting and full of engaging activities which kept the children’s attention throughout. The water table was a fantastic experience for the children to see some of the geographical processes taking place and how these processes can be altered or stopped. The activities linked well to our science and physical geography learning.”
– Mr. Breckon (Y5/6 teacher)
