My inquiry project focusing on outdoor education.

Throughout my practicum and my time at Harwin I found we focused a lot on place and connecting to the community around us. I began to wonder how exactly we could expect our students to connect to place if we were not utilizing the world around us, by this I mean utilizing our outdoor classrooms. I was fortunate enough to have a coaching teacher who really believed in the value of learning outside. She in fact had an outdoor classroom that we utilized on a daily basis.

We have heard a lot about teaching students about place and why it is important, and teachers praise outdoor classrooms, yet they only seem to use these methods during May and June when the weather is warm and sunny. During my time at Harwin I was having the kids build a model of their community yet not once did we go outside and actually explore the land around us. Having the opportunity in my practicum to utilize outdoor learning I began to wonder just how much benefits there are to learning outside and if outdoor learning has limitations.

I started to talk to my coaching teacher about her use of her outdoor classroom and why we don’t see other teachers at the school following suit. She informed me that she has used her outdoor classroom for years and has found teachers find it to be challenging or a waist of time with how long it takes to transition to outdoor time. We also discussed how she uses her outdoor class balanced between indoor learning and outdoor learning and how some things are easier to conduct at tables or with a whiteboard. I asked her about the nature Kindergarten in Williams lake and her opinions on that. In Williams lake we have a nature kindergarten where children spend 80-90% of their time learning outside. She says though it has many benefits children coming into grade 1 after attending that program are behind their fellow classmates. This made me wonder if our standards are truly important. I think we stand to benefit more then just the ABC if we are learning outside. Students are able to make human connections to their world and community. Students are able to build upon empathy as they see the world grow and see how their actions impact this. I am curious as to who decided what was important to learn and why there seems to be a hierarchy of what is important to know. Yes, I believe the curriculum is important I wouldn’t be going into this career if I didn’t think this. However, I think with the way of our world there are many more important things to teach besides ABC, 123 we need to teach our students how to be human in a digital world.

Okay I got a little long winded here. For my inquiry project I intend to research and understand the benefits of outdoor learning and how it plays a role in our students social emotional and academic development. We can’t teach students about place and community and sense of self if they live in a box in a school or explore solely through our online world.

Using the Spiral

Scanning: Before we even started with the kids at Harwin when we were fist given an overview of what we were to do with our students, I started to research and brainstorm ideas to teach students about place. Most of my ideas focused more so on the social studies curriculum and I think it was there that I made y first mistake. I didn’t even consider taking students outdoors in order to teach them about their place.

Focusing: Our time at Harwin we were told to not only focus on the social studies curriculum but to focus on sense of place. I did this by building a diorama of Prince George with my students. However, I began to see how we were teaching our students about place without taking them outside to explore their place.

Developing a Hunch: Noticing the lack of connection to our outdoor place I began to think of how I could build upon this during my practicum. How beneficial was the outdoors during a student learning and how can we utilize this as much as possible? I was blessed to not only have a coaching teacher who saw this benefit but had an outdoor classroom herself.

Learning: Through out my practicum I began to learn and understand the benefits of outdoor classrooms. I was encouraged to utilize this resource and decided to run with it. I created lessons focusing on my outdoor classroom and transitioned as many lessons as I could to fit our outdoor environment. With that hands-on experience I was able to see firsthand how much this impacted my kindergarten class. I saw more engagement and excitement, and never-ending hands-on possibilities. I focused on our five sense during my last week of practicum and this was very beneficial as we had the opportunity to go on a nature walk and use all five sense in an interactive way. I saw how much the students were able to retain from that lesson compared to a lesson taught solely indoors. Having this opportunity to use an outdoor classroom and learn from that experience I started to wonder about all the benefits outdoor learning provides.

Taking Action: This goes hand in hand with the learning as I mentioned all of the outdoor learning, I did with my kindergarten class during practicum. Through my learning I was taking action and testing my theory about outdoor learning. Going on nature walks, exploring color with snow, going on scavenger hunts, and exploring our sense of place.

Checking: During my practicum I was able to check and understand my theory on outdoor classrooms by putting it to the test. I then used research to further understand and back up my believes of outdoor classrooms. I was able to see the research supporting outdoor classrooms and use it to better my understanding of what they entail and how we should be utilizing them.

My Findings

Once I decided that I wanted to focus on outdoor classrooms I had to decide if I want to focus on negatives and positives or solely focus on the benefits of outdoor classrooms. I decided to focus on the latter. I knew I wanted to represent this using visual arts as I believe that is one of the benefits to outdoor learning. Everything around you becomes a hands-on visual lesson. I envisioned a painting of a child and out of that child stems a tree, this tree is filled with the benefits of outdoor classrooms. I did some research to back up my beliefs. I think what’s important here is that, just by looking at my painting you can understand how important outdoor learning is. Reading a paper about outdoor learning is not going to be as powerful as seeing an image, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” To add to that I think the best way to see the benefits of outdoor learning is to get out their and put it to the test. So even though I think my painting is enough to prove my point I have provided a list of benefits to outdoor classrooms as well as my references to support my case.

The Benefits of outdoor learning

• Building a generation who cares for our planet. The global crisis we face will only get more serious if we do not teach our young generation to take care of their planet. The fate of the world is not in a few environmentalists but instead that of our future generation. Immersing our young learners in the world around them will help them connect to the land and fight for it in the future. “school grounds should be examples of environmental responsibilities” (Chapman, 1976, P.6).
• Outdoor classrooms enrich learning opportunities for our students. They are able to learn in an interactive, hands-on, real world application environment.
• “outdoor, classrooms give the students opportunity for real learning experiences, rather than make-believe ones. Outdoor experiences supplement indoor education. As a place for “creative learning, outdoor classrooms, give depth, meaning, and new dimensions to lessons about the relationship of man to his environment” (Chapman, 1976, P.6).
• It allows students to have a genuine connection to their place and their community.
• nature-based learning has been tied to high levels of engagement and enjoyment in a number of studies “Out of 100 paired comparisons, classroom engagement was over a full standard deviation better in the nature condition in 48 pairs; in 20 of those 48, the nature condition bested its classroom counterpart by over two standard deviations” (Kuo, 2017).
• Nature-based learning appears to foster students’ intrinsic motivation
• When teachers offer lessons in relatively natural settings, students may benefit in a number of important ways. Academically, some evidence suggests students retain more after lessons in nature in biology and math (language arts, social studies, and science more generally, than after similar lessons indoors”(Kuo, 2017).
• Bringing students back to the basics- Specifically our indigenous learners- outdoor classrooms provides them with learning that resembles that of their ancestors.
• Outdoor classrooms have been proven to require less redirects by the teachers. “The rate of “redirects,” or instances where a teacher interrupted the flow of instruction to redirect students’ attention, was cut almost in half after a lesson in nature. Normally, these redirects occur roughly once every 3.5 min of instruction; after a lesson in nature, classroom engagement is such that teachers are able to teach for 6.5 min, on average, without interruption.” (Kuo, 2017).
• More opportunity for physical activity- our world fights inactive children addicted to technology, providing them with outdoor learning will allow them to be more active and see the health benefits the outdoors provides them.
• Positive impact on teachers- “teachers are able to teach in a more engaging way after a bit of walking, a bit of a breather and change in scenery, and a dose of nature has rejuvenated their attention and interest and reduced their stress levels.” (Kuo, 2017).

My experience at Harwin and during my practicum were incredibly positive and beneficial to my learning. I think it is incredibly important for not only us as educators but for students to understand a sense of place. Knowing where you belong and connecting to the world around you are fundamental parts of you as a person. During my practicum I witnessed the benefits of outdoor classrooms and it sparked a desire to understand outdoor classrooms and the benefits they provide our learners. Seeing hands on the opportunities this provided my kindergarten class encouraged me to understand outdoor learning and how I intend to use it in the future. I knew outdoor learning was beneficial as this has always been a key part of who I am and what I stand for. The research I found only solidified how important outdoor learning is. I look back on my time at Harwin and feel disappointed that I never utilized the opportunity to go outside. Sadly, only one of my fellow teacher candidates took their students outside. How did I intend to teach my students about place if we never even stepped outside our four walls of the classroom? Outdoor learning doesn’t just improve student’s mental health, physical health but it provides them with the social emotional learning that is so important in our society. As I go into my next practicums and then into my teaching career, I plan to not only implement online classrooms on a regular basis but to encourage my fellow teacher candidates to do so themselves. I stated before that our young learners are our future when it comes to taking care of our planet well me and my fellow candidates are the future teachers and it is our responsibility to teach students this. The best way to do this will be to take advantage of the world around us.

The Benefits of Outdoor Education