20/03/18

Outdoor Learning

“Outdoor learning experiences are often remembered for a lifetime” (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2010).

Through mixing outdoor experiences and learning, it gives children more of an opportunity to explore and discover through play and achieve things that hard more difficult to achieve in the classroom.

Outdoor learning has many benefits:

• Develops critical thinking and problem solving
• Personal development
• Promotes healthy lifystyles
• Personal safety
• Inclusion for all

“…It’s clear that the outdoor environment offers motivating, exciting, different, relevant and easily accessible activities from pre-school through to college” (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2010).

To help ensure that children gain these benefits, using Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) and the SHANARRI Well-being Wheel can allow teachers and practitioners to support them and make sure the children are:

• Safe
• Healthy
• Active
• Nurtured
• Achieving
• Responsible
• Respected
• Included

To ensure that GIRFEC is being used effectively the method of planning, implementation and evaluation can be used. To be more effective at fulfilling a child’s needs GIRFEC uses its wellbeing wheel of indicators to help make sure these needs are met. Each section of the SHANARRI wheel sets out how to ensure each aspect of the child’s learning and holistic development are being encouraged and cared for. By doing this teachers can assess the children’s learning and development in a safe and secure way whether the child is playing indoors or outdoors, the children should have access to both and should be given the freedom to play and explore.  Outdoor Learning can also be beneficial for teachers as they get “to see each other in a different light, building positive relationships and improving self -awareness and understanding of others” (Education Scotland,  2010).

During this session we got a chance to have our own experience at just how fun and beneficial outdoor learning can be. Before we went outside and tried out the QR Reader app while doing a treasure hunt for clues, we experimented with a different app, Pic College. This was a chance to get to grips with the app before using it to help make a summarised college of what we encountered on our treasure hunt. 

As a practice we got to go around the university and choose a topic we wanted to create a college about, I chose to create one showing the different types of architecture and textures around the university.

During the treasure hunt one member of the group scanned the codes, one member took pictures to create a college afterwards and another member marked down the answers to the questions when the code was scanned. This would be a great task to have the children do because not only would they get to experience the apps they get to build on their social and team work skills.

The apps were easy to use and made working together fun and the fact that is was a treasure hunt to see which group could crack the code first created a competitive yet friendly atmosphere. This is the sort of atmosphere that gets kids excited to participate and create memories that they will remember “for a lifetime” (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2010).

Reference List:

Learning and Teaching Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence Through Outdoor Learning.

Education Scotland (2010) Curriculum for Excellence Through Outdoor Learning.