How to promote outdoor learning?
Sandrine Farrell
2025-05-21 16:07:52
Count answers: 1
Just start, don’t wait until you’ve ‘done’ your playground or built an outdoor classroom, or whatever grand vision you might have, to start teaching out of doors. Instead, begin with what you’ve got. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only got a square of tarmac, it still offers a different learning environment and experience to being indoors. You’ll find that once you start using your school grounds regularly for learning, you’ll start to see new possibilities as to how to develop them.
Use as much natural stuff as much as possible, we often start our sessions with a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt to collect the inspiration and resources needed. Foraging and collecting helps children connect to nature, the seasons and their local environment.
Be messy, be noisy, be solitary, be very quiet indeed, use all the aspects of being outdoors to maximise the benefit for your pupils. Your outdoor space is a free asset that you can use to enhance learning across the curriculum – there’s a growing body of evidence to support the benefits to learning, social skills and health.
Treat it as a must-have, not a nice-to-have, so be as robust in your planning, differentiation, assessment and record keeping for outdoor learning as you would indoors.
‘Outdoor learning’, ‘learning in natural environments’, ‘learning outside the classroom’, ‘Forest School’, ‘school gardening’ – whatever you’re after, there’s a stack of information, advice and training out there to help you build your confidence and make great outdoor things happen.
Cruz O'Connell
2025-05-21 13:37:48
Count answers: 1
Outdoor Adventure Learning might provide opportunities for disadvantaged pupils to participate in activities that they otherwise might not be able to access.
Through participation in these challenging physical and emotional activities, outdoor adventure learning interventions can support pupils to develop non-cognitive skills such as resilience, self-confidence and motivation.
The application of these non-cognitive skills in the classroom may in turn have a positive effect on academic outcomes.
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