You don’t have to teach in a leafy green neighborhood or take your students on a special one-time field trip in order to expose your students to outdoor education. There is nature-a-plenty in the school yard! I encourage you to incorporate outdoor education into your lesson plans regularly. Your students will love it, and you will love seeing an elevated level of student engagement!
Research has shown that time spent playing and exploring outdoors strengthens a child’s physical health and mental well-being, improves academic performance and social relationships, and develops positive conservation attitudes. Sometimes you just gotta get outdoors…
Read on friends…
Preparing for outdoor learning…
Before you take your learning outdoors here are a few things to consider:
- Does your district have temperature limits for taking kids outside to play? Where I teach, our winters are fairly mild. We do have the occasional ‘arctic blast’, but our summers are extremely hot. Outdoor learning has to be carefully timed.
- Make sure your admin is on board. God forbid, you take your kids outside and someone misinterprets your learning activity as extra recess… just sayin’.
- Wherever you are located outside, make sure you know where to take them in case of any type of emergency drill (and make sure your students know as well). Also have some band-aids, your student roster, and your phone handy, just in case…
- Prepare your students for outdoor learning ahead of time. Be sure to preview what the students will be doing. and that they have a clear understanding of your expectations (academically and behaviorally). Just like you teach procedures at the beginning of the year, you need to teach procedures for outdoor learning.
With a little bit of preparation, your outdoor learning activities can turn out to be some of your best lessons ever!
Get Outdoors…
There is sooo much to see! Here are just a few suggestions:
- Have students take their science journals, a pencil, and a hand lens on their exploration. They can record their observations in their journals by drawing and labeling what they see. Another good tip is to teach them to always write the date, time of day, and weather conditions at the top of their journal pages. This allows them to begin to associate their observations with natural patterns.
- Allow students to take pictures of different phenomena with either a digital or phone camera.
- Complete a scavenger hunt activity (always fun!). Click here for a fun (and free!) scavenger hunt.
- Collect seeds, flowers, leaves, acorns, pinecones, etc… that can come back into the classroom for observation.
Bring the outdoors back into the classroom…
Once you’ve spent some time learning outdoors, you’ll ideally want to tie it back into whatever your current science unit studies. Here are just a few ideas:
- Have students consult some field guides and identify a few of the objects they found during their scavenger hunt. They can then create a poster or slide to share with the class.
- Students can use their identifications to make collage posters or slide decks about the biodiversity in their schoolyard.
- Create a classroom nature table display. I have one in my class, and once the kids become familiar with it, it’s never long before they start bringing all sorts of rocks, seeds, acorns, etc. that they find on their walks to and from school (which means that they are being observant… yay!).
- If there are puddles outside, collect some of the water to look at under the microscope. Another idea: if there is a sizeable puddle of dirty water, gather some and then have students devise a method for ‘cleaning’ the water (just make sure they know to never drink it). I have done this with pond water in my class. It ties right into methods of separating mixtures and solutions studies, and can be a great springboard for discussions about the water cycle, natural resources, and conservation.
- When studying structures and functions, have your students collect different parts of a variety of plants that they can assemble to create a ‘super plant’. They can research the different plants that they collected leaves, etc… from and then create an illustration that explains how the different structures and functions of the different parts make their new plant ‘super’.
Integrating Technology
Remember those pictures they may have taken? There is a fabulous app called iNaturalist that can help to identify different plants, animals, fungi, etc. I love it! I use it all the time, and have made some really cool identifications in different parts of the country. One note: Because iNaturalist has a social media component, there are strict conditions for its use. Please read the Teacher Guide before implementing in your classroom, as their are age limits for its use. I have used iNaturalist in my class, but I was the only one with the app. Students had to share images with me, and then I helped them to make identifications. There is a kid-friendly/safe version called Seek that may be more appropriate for your students.
One thing I can say for sure is that you and your students will thoroughly enjoy outdoor learning. By taking your students outside to explore nature, you will be reaching your students on a level that is impossible to reach in the classroom. I have often found that my students that weren’t high achievers in the classroom thrived when they were outdoors, and engagment was sky-high. I hope you give it a try!
P.S… I’d love to hear back about any experiences you have had taking your students outdoors!
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