This week we participated in an EdCamp discussion on outdoor learning.
We discussed this in a variety of subject areas. Some notable ideas that were shared include:
- French Immersion: plant walks to encourage vocabulary development or walks where students must speak in French to practice conversations
- Social studies: using location as an example to incorporate curriculum into the daily lesson, encourage students to look around their location and consider what things look like now vs what they could have looked like 100 years ago, who “owns” land, etc.
- Math: measuring natural phenomena like trees and calculating how tall they are or how far away they are.
- Use something like a stick to measure how many of them there are around a perimeter, like the school. Encourages them to estimate and use alternative forms of measurement.
- Using a change of environment to encourage students to keep engaging with challenging content. Can they bring their worksheet outside and work on it there if the weather permits?
- Physics: can have students measure skid marks of cars to understand how fast a car was driving. Measuring how quickly something drops or sinks. How quickly does a rubber ducky float down a creek?
- Cross-curricular: teaching students survival skills in the outdoors, could do food classes in the outdoors in terms of cultivating food, community gardens, tea making etc. Working individually or in group work to help identify birds, trees, number of things in a space as a way to burn some energy and also allow students to practice calculation skills in an outdoor learning environment.
We also discussed some challenges:
- How do you handle kids not wanting to go outside?
- learning how to prepare for the weather is a skill
- Ratio of adults to kids
- safety concerns
- Relationships are integral to creating a comfy space for outdoor learning and managing for some of these challenges.
Personally, I really enjoyed this discussion on outdoor learning as I am preparing to begin a practicum in a Marine Science class which has a very large focus on land-based learning. Our discussion helped me realize some concerns I have and ways to incorporate this type of instruction across subject areas. I was able to explore the Outdoor Learning School and Store, which provides some resources for teachers interested in incorporating outdoor learning in their classrooms.