Sharing Good Practice
TAKING THE CURRICULUM OUTSIDE
BY ANITA FOSTER
O
utdoor education is at
its most potent when its
strands
are
interwoven
with the formal school
curriculum,
rather
than
being
undertaken as isolated windows within
a child’s education. Having previously
discussed the benefits of outdoor
learning, and techniques for managing
groups and their learning outside, in
this article we’ll look at some specific
outdoor ideas for different curriculum
areas.
There are many online and published
resources providing ideas and
inspiration. Whatever the activity,
consider why you are doing it, and how
it fits into your scheme of work:
• To introduce, inspire, provide a
context?
• To consolidate learning?
• To review?
• How does the outdoor element link
to indoor activities?
• Consider your whole learning
environment – where is the best
place for each element to happen?
Outdoor areas can provide:
• a different space – storytelling
outdoors creates a different
atmosphere and enhances speaking
and listening skills
• an opportunity to do it differently
– weaving materials onto a fence as
opposed to a smaller weaving frame
• access to different resources – the
weather, the buildings or the plants
and animals
Here we will give some brief ideas
around 4 curriculum areas – literacy,
numeracy, science and art. There
are of course many activities which
can support other subjects, including
geography, languages, music and
history, and many opportunities for
cross-curricular activities, with outdoor
learning lending itself particularly well
to enquiry and project based learning.
Secondary schools tend to use the
outside space less frequently than
primaries, but when they do, it is often
for longer and more detailed work, eg
scientific and geographical surveys.
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Literacy
“Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen
to it, turn yourself into it. When you do
this, the words look after themselves,
like magic.” (Ted Hughes, What is the
Truth?) What better place to do this
than outdoors?
• Find something outdoors and come
up with the biggest lie – e.g. a leaf
is a flying carpet for ants! Imagine
- what can they see? What do they
use it for?
• Re-create your favourite story
outside.
Think about different
locations, dialogue, how might the
story or characters change?
• Share favourite playtime games or
come up with new ones and write
instructions. Ask friends and family
for games they used to play and
write instructions for these.
• Create sound maps, developing
symbols for different sounds – how
would you represent sounds that
are short or ongoing, close by or far
away, high up or low down? Link to
music by creating your own outdoor
score and performance.
Share poems in different locations for
inspiration. Write a single sentence,
Class Time
using whatever grammatical technique
you are studying.
Arrange the
sentences into a single verse of poem
to be shared and performed.
Numeracy/Maths
• Estimate and measure features in
your school grounds – distance,
area, perimeter, height.
Use
standard and non-standard units.
• Create scale models of your school
grounds, or draw scale outlines on
the playground, eg how big was the
BFG (linking to literacy)?
• Have a maths treasure hunt: can you
find different shapes, angles greater
or less than 900, a symmetrical leaf
or flower, a repeating pattern…
What extra questions do these
generate?
• Collect different materials (stones,
leaves, sticks) and present them in
different formats - bar charts, venn
or carroll diagrams
How tall is the tallest tree or building?
How can you work it out? Why would
you need to know? Think about
estimating and measuring, introducing
clinometers and trigonometry for
older students.