Forest Schools: Offering A Fresh Approach To Learning
I am currently completing a portfolio of work to gain my Forest School Leader 3 qualification. Recently, I was lucky enough to participate in Forest School Practical Training with the outdoors group, which has a forest school training centre based in Exmouth. The week-long course was a wonderful experience. I learned the practical skills needed […]
Developing the Wellbeing of Children Through Outdoor Learning
In today’s blog post, I’ll discuss the importance of children getting the opportunity to be in outdoor environments and how this helps with mental well-being and soothes those with neurological challenges, including ADHD. Nature Deficit Disorder Louv (2008) highlights that children spend less unstructured time in nature. The paper concludes that this impacts children’s […]
The Importance of Outdoor Play
Throughout my career as a teacher, I’ve mainly worked with KS2 children, but in my new role, I’ve been enjoying my KS1 and early years classes. They’ve given me the chance to observe many fantastic examples of play in the early years and KS1 departments, which has inspired me to introduce more free-play opportunities into […]
Making Sustainability Connections Through Outdoor Learning
“Sustainable development is about developing an understanding of the global implications of our daily actions (e.g., energy and resource use) and taking responsibility for these” (Beames et al., 2012, p. 8). There’s plenty of research that supports the view that the world is living unsustainably and that tackling this problem should be a priority […]
Overcoming Challenges and Teaching Outdoors
Overcoming Challenges Teachers often face seeming obstacles when planning and facilitating outdoor learning. These include weather, adult-to-child ratios, and timetabling (Salmi et al., 2016). The aforementioned are all challenges I have encountered as a teacher, and through experience, I have come up with solutions to most logistical problems. As a class teacher, I planned one […]
Linking Outdoor Learning to the Curriculum
Finding Connections Finding connections between the classroom and the outdoors may be essential for justifying teachers’ use of outdoor learning as part of their practice. It is generally accepted within primary education that interdisciplinary-connected experiences can be more conducive to learning (Prince, 2018). However, teachers can often feel pressured to deliver certain curricular experiences and […]
What Is Outdoor Learning?
The Institute of Outdoor Learning (2020) defines outdoor learning as a broad term that includes discovery, experimentation, learning about and connecting to the natural world, and engaging in environmental and adventure activities. Within primary education, there is a focus on educationally legitimising outdoor learning. Hence, outdoor learning is commonly becoming viewed as a pedagogical […]