Teach Middle East Magazine Mar-Apr 2018 Issue 4 Volume 5 | Page 37

Sharing Good Practice Science and Technology • Develop scientific enquiry: take a walk around your site – what do you notice? What questions can you come up with? Can you design and carry out an experiment to answer them? • Explore properties of materials, finding natural materials with the same properties as man-made ones. Use these to create a product with a purpose - a shelter, a small raft, a new seating area • Explore flight trajectories, speed, weight and forces with PE or play equipment • Create interactive trails around the site using GPS technology or QR codes What about shading? • Make crayon or chalk rubbings of different surfaces and features. Alternatively, for a more tactile experience, use aluminium foil. Try and guess where different rubbings were made. • Carry out a biodiversity survey. Compare different areas of your site, or to off-site locations. or • Create an outdoor, ephemeral art gallery, or a sculpture trail using recycled materials Look at adaptation of plants and animals, including colour, movement, feeding. Create your own creature using air-drying clay and natural materials and write a fact sheet for it. • Design and create outdoor features for the site, eg art wall, playground markings, mosaics. Collect natural materials and arrange on card using dou ble-sided tape – think about colour, shading, patterns, size, natural and man-made materials. Art and Design • Make small pieces of different coloured paper or card and encourage pupils to find a match outdoors. Which are easier to find? Why? What are colours used for? These are just a few suggestions, ideal for the school site but also suitable for other locations. In our next and final article we will look at opportunities for off-site outdoor learning, and consider how these can be fully integrated into a whole-school approach. Anita is a Director of the outdoor learning consultancy Maximising Learning. She has spent the last 25 years teaching ‘Outside the Classroom’, and works with schools to help them explore and develop opportunities for outdoor learning, embedding these in their curricula. Class Time | | Mar - Apr 2018 | 35