Originally appears in the Summer 2014 issue

FOUR YEARS AGO, we took a group of students outside the classroom and presented them with a project: to study a single square foot of garden space. What can one small outdoor space teach a group of elementary students? Through exploring and journaling about their space, our students became fascinated with their local environment. They learned that plants and animals are in constant interaction with each other, cooperating and competing to survive. They came to the realization that a very intricate balance exists between living and non-living organisms. Our students began to think of themselves as scientists, and as teachers we realized teaching outside a traditional classroom
can have enormous benefits for elementary students.

What began our own investigation into outdoor education was a formerly unused space between two wings of a fairly old school building. The space met educational objectives and allowed us to reinforce curriculum standards for reading, language arts, mathematics, and science, while simultaneously, teaching life skills such as data collection, cooperative group work, and collaboration. We have also tackled science topics like ecosystems, species interactions, energy, and dynamics. It is truly amazing what you can learn in your own backyard. Below, we will discuss ideas and improvements we have applied to our own outdoor space, explanations of how particular features compliment and extend the curriculum, simple suggestions for managing learning in a novel environment as well as suggested student assessment strategies. We hope that by sharing our experiences of our initial foray into using the schoolyard to teach, we will inspire you to embrace the outdoor classroom with your own students.

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Outdoor space opportunities

Outdoor classroom experiences promote deep student learning, which translates into greater learner interest, under- standing, and involvement. This may explain why the use of the schoolyard as an expanded classroom is becoming more and more common in formal education. Even if your school does not have an established garden, almost any outdoor area — from flowerbeds or trees to a small patch of grass — contains a wealth of living things that interact with one another for sustainability and success.

What are the benefts of trees to outdoor habitats? As a result of student interest and motivation, we began by studying the trees in our schoolyard. An Eastern Dogwood blooming in early Spring, donated by the school in memory of a parent, provided an excellent visual for teaching students about growth and change. In a very real way, our children became aware of growth, response, and reproduction. We continued to observe this organism throughout the school year. Planting trees with students would also be an effective way to teach them about life and growth, while greening your schoolyard.

Installing bluebird nest boxes is another great learning opportunity. Eastern bluebirds have a docile demeanor, which makes them an excellent species to monitor in the spring. If the weather is mild, they will often raise more than one brood. We encouraged students to monitor, collect data, and journal about the bluebirds they observed. Through discussion it was decided that we would track appearance of male and female birds as well as associated activities. These included nest building, egg laying, and monitoring of hatchlings as they grew and eventually left the nest. It was a marvelous real world example of animal adaptations and environmental niches. Since beginning this project, many students have chosen to install boxes of their own at home, thus moving from awareness, to knowledge, to personal action. This kind of response is our ultimate goal as educators.

Outdoor classroom management

Whether inside or outside, all educators should be willing to ask questions and learn with their students. Familiarity with the outdoors comes from being immersed in it! Traditional teacher preparation covers classroom management and ‘indoor’ lessons but few teachers have received training on how to use the outdoors for teaching. Taking students into the schoolyard requires many of the same rules and interactions, however some modification is essential. Children must understand the ground rules of outdoor space learning, and teachers must be sure to implement them to ensure a safe and productive learning environment. Figure 2 lists our top 6 tips for schoolyard excursions.

Modeling and maintaining clear expectations is key. Train students to walk calmly, observe and journal respectfully, and share with other members of their learning group using a soft voice. A resource on this topic that should be on every teacher’s bookshelf is Herb Broda’s Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning: Using the Outdoors as an Instructional Tool, K-8. In this text, Broda suggests outdoor learning should begin with short schoolyard tasks, possessing specific goals. As students learn to employ proper investigative behaviors, sessions can be expanded and extended. One implementation example is scheduling an “Outdoor Friday” every week, granting classes demonstrating proper behaviour during the week the opportunity to learn outside. This two-fold approach encourages the behaviour you expect from your students, while outdoor excursions reinforce learning concepts.

Life cycles

Cycles occur all the time in both nature and in life. A focus on cycles, including ecosystem interactions and the move- ment of energy within these ecosystems, is an important part of learning about our world. There is no better way for students to understand these concepts than to go outside and immerse themselves in nature. Classes will discover organisms and observe changes that occur as living things transition through their lives, witnessing birth, death, and reproduction firsthand. Our students observed the chickens in the outdoor classroom over the course of the school year. The growth and development from egg to adult was recorded in journals, on video, and in pictures. Changes and behavior of the parent chickens and their offspring was noted and students made comparisons in size, coloration, body proportion, and feeding behavior. This activity naturally led to discussions regarding inheritance and genetics, as well as birth and aging. Additionally, eggs that didn’t hatch in the allotted time were used. Through careful dissection students were able to see the developmental stages of chicks inside the eggshell, and we hypothesized possible reasons for the eggs not to mature and lead to the hatching of a live chick. Text- books describe these changes but active investigation and learning led to even greater engagement and retention.

Most countries have curriculum standards that direct education. Teachers implement these standards through their teaching, but the questions and concerns children have also guide and personalize the learning that occurs. Lessons on cycles in nature, as well as the interactions, energy, and dynamics within ecosystems can easily be reinforced in outdoor classroom settings. Students can implement science and engineering practices when they develop and employ models, as well as plan and carry out investigations. This also allows students to take ownership of their learning. Our classes have identified and solved problems in the garden as they arose during the year. Because our chickens were free range during the school day we quickly found that they would eat the berries and tomatoes growing in the gar- den. The problem was solved when the children explored different designs to protect the fruits without endangering the chickens. The students developed a blueprint for a PVC frame with plastic netting to cover the strawberries, and researched materials, costs, and building models. As a result a prototype cover for our strawberries was developed. The children built the frame themselves to protect the strawberries and decided to wrap the tomatoes in a wire cage for their protection. These steps model real world entrepreneurship, where success of a chosen solution is monitored and modifications are made if necessary.

Ecosystem relationships

Interdependent relationships in ecosystems are a part of the real world in an outdoor classroom. Relationships between plants, animals, and other living things are observed even in a small space outside a school. By taking an on-site feld trip a minimum of three times a year, students will see changes and assess differences for the living things they observe. Having the class research and list possible solutions for negative observations is one simple way to make learning personal and relevant, while simultaneously empowering students.

Cause and effect as well as structure and function are easily covered by curriculum and activities that take place in or are reinforced by the outdoors. Every living species gives you and your students a plethora of opportunities to examine and explore interactions and changes in an environment. A favourite activity that has grown from our use of the outdoor space is students’ adoption of a chosen organism from the site. Each child selects an organism, researches it, and shares their information with their classmates. This includes a picture or sketch, a description, their habitat needs, their home range and more. This activity gives students a real, tangible connection to another living thing, simultaneously empowering them as they become experts. Additionally, it provides students with a meaningful connection as we identify selected vocabulary. Throughout this process, guided questions are asked by teachers and learning is documented. By the end of the study we have both evidence of learning and a schoolyard field guide.

Activities in Figure 4 are examples that connect the out- door learning space with teaching and learning goals. To implement these activities, students used skills such as journaling, writing, record-keeping, observing and displaying data, sketching, communicating, group work, the ability to reason abstractly and quantitatively, and measuring to create a guidebook with specific information. Additional skills such as researching, generating hypotheses and developing models were advanced and refined, as students became experts.

Formal and informal assessment

As students learn and explore content, good educators use many types of assessment to gain a cohesive picture of individual student progress. We suggest using informal assessment techniques such as pair-and-share, teacher observation and/or checklists, and “two things you learned, one question you have.” Growing content awareness by students calls for more appropriate formal assessments, which may include formal tests, long-term projects, and any type of cumulative assignment that has depth of content and demonstrates student growth and retention. Most approaches to assessment within the classroom can also be applied and modified to work in an outdoor environment.

Scientists use journals to record data, write conclusions, discuss scientific findings, and more. This is one method discussed earlier in the article that we use heavily with our students. As students come to understand the purpose of scientific journals, we develop success criteria as a class for what encompasses a strong journal entry, based on a standard journal rubric (Figure 5). Clear, well-defined expectations for journal recordings should be laid out, discussed and modeled. With hands-on practice and self-imposed criteria, students will improve their writing skills significantly. Informal entry-sharing also allows them to learn from one another and reinforce concepts.

Education in the outdoor classroom actively engages children in real-life learning while empowering them and allowing them to take ownership of their learning.
Through the use of an outdoor classroom, your students will be able to regularly observe changes in nature: growth, death and the interactions between organisms. Children love to care for life. You will be surprised by how much they enjoy weeding the garden, and turning the compost. By engaging with the outdoors, they will develop a deeper appreciation for the remarkable world we all belong to.

 

Resources

Broda, Herbert W., 2007. Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning: Using the Outdoors as an Instructional Tool, k-8. Steinhouse Publishers

Louv, Richard, 2008. Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Defcit Disorder. Algonquin Books.

OBIS, Outdoor Biology Instructional Strategies: www.outdoorbiology.com

Project Learning Tree: www.plt.org

Project WILD: www.projectwild.org

 

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Cindi Smith-Walters is a professor of biology at Middle Tennessee State University and co-directs the MTSU Center for Environmental Studies. Christa Campbell is a 4th/5th Math and Science Laboratory Instructor at the McFadden School of Excellence in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.