☀ LEARNING OUTDOORS FOR A CHANGE ☁

                                                                  ꃼ
I am finally writing about a theme I am very fond of. My favoritest. And as the title implies, it is about outdoor learning. Learning outside the class environment has indeed been one of my favorite activities in elementary school. I remember almost everything about those classes. I even found a four-leaf clover once, my first four leaf-clover ever. It was indeed a biology class, and until late I used to think outdoor learning can only serve a biology, history or geography class. But no, I was totally proved wrong, and all the research that I have been doing has left me speechless about the infinite ways in which you can integrate the outdoors into your English teaching. Not long ago I had my first experience as an outdoors teacher. I was obviously skeptic about the fruitfulness of the method, yet day by day, I come to the conclusion that it is absolutely necessary for such method, if I may call it so, to take place as a learning environment. In order for my suggestion to resonate to you, so that you can use it in your future classes, in case you’re still curious about the benefits of it, let me tell you why.

                                                                   ⁂

Outdoor learning has a positive impact for teachers and educators on their practice, health and wellbeing, professional development, job satisfaction and can support curriculum delivery.

Outdoor learning has positive impacts for children - it works on their intrinsic motivation for learning, provides enjoyable lessons, increases creativity, and activates thinking outside the box.  It also improves children’s social skills and behavior, and furthermore has been proven to encourage better attendance, teamwork and to reduce bullying. Studies have shown better grades, decreased stress level, increased motivation, better attitudes about the environment, better overall behavior, increased communication skills and outdoor skills, increased self-dependence and improved memory because moving the class outside opens up a world of fresh stimuli for the senses that have an amazing power to lock into the brain and secure whatever information was being learned at the time along with it. Outdoor education and play support emotional, behavioral and intellectual development. Studies have shown that students who learn outdoors develop: a sense of self, independence, confidence, creativity, decision-making and problem-solving skills, empathy towards others, motor skills, self-discipline and initiative. Often, the outdoors provides a change of pace from the classroom, which students and teachers enjoy. Studies have shown increased student enthusiasm for learning outdoors – if the student loves doing something, they are more motivated to lean hard and are more likely to learn from that thing, as long as teaching outdoors is fun. It is also very inexpensive, can work with all ages and can be adapted to each child’s learning goals and needs. 

                                                                   ✻

Activities and games you can use.

Writing activities:  ✒

• Ask your students to collect some items that interest them. For example, a shell, a flower or a pebble. Ask them to create their own exhibition and to write a caption for each item.
• Ask your child to shoot a short, silent video. For example, my favorite places, or my favorite things to do outdoors. Then ask them to write 10–20 English words to describe their video. If they feel confident, they could then record a voiceover to their video, using the words from their list.
• Outdoor adventures can be a great inspiration for creative writing. Ask your students to take some photos of things that interest them. Then ask them to use one or more of the pictures to write a short story. 

Reading activities:

• Ask your students to research an outdoor food recipe - something that could be cooked on a barbeque/campfire, or something that could be prepared for a picnic.
• Your students might like to create their own outdoor reading den. Encourage your child to read storybooks outside, particularly books about outdoor adventures and nature. 

Speaking and listening activities ☊

• Decide on an obstacle course, with objects that have to be avoided (for example, trees, bushes, footballs). One student will walk through the obstacle course while blindfolded. Another student will guide them using English words (e.g. left, right, stop, take one step back). 
• Scavenger Hunt. Give your children a list of things they need to find outdoors. They can be a pebble, a leaf, a piece of wood, etc. If you want to make it more challenging, ask them to find items from specific colors, textures or in alphabetical order. You are also welcome to hide items related to a specific set of vocabulary words that you want them to practice. After a period of time, ask them to show you all the treasures they found outdoors and tell you what they are for, or maybe take pictures of.

• Play guessing games such as I spy something that starts with the letter … and 20 questions (ask your child to think of something, then ask up to 20 questions to guess what it is). 
• Balloon War Attack. This activity is great for reinforcing the vocabulary words that they may be struggling with. What you need to do is fill balloons with water. Then, give the kids a permanent marker and ask them to write a vocabulary word on the surface of each balloon. (If they don’t know how to write yet, you can do it, while shouting the vocabulary word out loud.) After the task is done, the kids will need to review every vocabulary word using them in a sentence or giving specific examples. They will get one balloon for each correct answer. Therefore, the more balloons they get, the better prepared they will be for the water balloon war that comes at the end of the exercise.
• Simon Says. This classic game of giving players a command starting with the phrase “Simon Says” is a great teaching tool. It will entertain your children while helping with their listening skills. Make sure the commands require physical activity such as: “hop on your left leg” or “jump up five times.” You can add props to make the activity even more fun!
• Talk Amongst Yourselves. Give students discussion questions or have them bring their group activities outside. Your students will find lots of space to get away from their classmates, and will have just as much to talk about when they are outside as when they are inside. If you are looking for a specific topic to bring outdoors, why not talk about being environmentally conscious? Challenge your students to find evidence of your school acting in earth friendly ways. At the same time, have them list any ways they think your school could be more environmentally conscious, and use those ideas to write letters of recommendation to the school board.
• Maybe take them on a school trip to someplace the locals speak English so the students will be more exposed to the language and have more opportunities to practice speaking.

So, when planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils ‟personal, social and emotional development‟ (Ofsted 2008)