09 Oct The Outdoor Classroom by Hailey Joubert, Head of Primary
There are many benefits to learning outdoors including connecting learning to real life and decreasing stress levels by connecting to nature.
Towards the end of Term 3, to provoke thinking about measurement and length, my Maths group engaged in a practical activity using sticks they had gathered from the Adventure Playground.
They were tasked with working independently, in pairs and small groups to order their collection of sticks from smallest to largest. On the surface this may appear to be a basic task but in reality, students needed to think and make decisions about:
- What criteria would need to be considered to be able to make accurate comparisons.
- Why there was sometimes a disagreement about which stick was longer or shorter.
- How to arrange their sticks to make the visual representation a true depiction of shortest to longest.
- How to work effectively as a group and involve everyone in making decisions.
By the time we returned to our indoor classroom, students had deepened their understanding of length and comparing the lengths of objects. They were able to apply their learning outdoors to create a set of instructions for measuring the length of lines and objects accurately.
Needless to say, my students and I also enjoyed the opportunity to wander around purposefully to select sticks suitable for the task and engage in learning in the outdoor classroom.