This is engaged learning.
“Matt, you need to move over here, Tim, you need to be next to Lisa, guys, make the line straight.”
David has taken the leadership role, he’s moving his peers around putting them into a “pentagon shape as seen by a bird in the sky”. It’s the only instruction the P4-5 class has had from the teacher.
Other children chip in - you can see the collaboration taking place naturally. “We need five corners.”
“There’s 27 of us, that means five on each side.”
“But two of us will need to stand in the middle.”
Everyone is taking part. The teacher? She’s observing.
This is child-led learning and it’s fun. They are all outside in the playground, revising the “properties of shape”, but that’s not what today’s lesson is about. This is just a way of managing the children, getting them instantly into a position where they can all easily see their teacher when she stands in the middle to give them the lesson.
A few simple sentences and the children are all heading off to collect “materials”. These could be natural or man-made, they are told. Today, they are looking at data analysis. They will use the materials to display their findings in a variety of pie charts and graphs. They will take photos of their graphs and then compile a written version in the classroom, compounding their skills and knowledge.
Taking learning outside has so many benefits, and there is increasing evidence to support this. Relating teaching concepts such as fractions or percentages to real life makes them meaningful to the children.
One 10-year-old, when asked to identify right angles in the environment, became increasingly frustrated. He was looking for the drawn symbol of a right angle - this child was in the “top” maths group. Using the outdoor context as an assessment tool, as suggested in Curriculum for Excellence benchmarks, allows teachers the opportunity to witness pupils “applying skills and knowledge in a new context to assess whether it is secure”.
This is a multi-sensory experience leading to more brain activity. It helps children to connect with nature and our environment and it has many health benefits, particularly increased chances of lifelong physical activity.
A P4 teacher witnessed a child walking to school shouting the four times table with his mum, pointing at the rows of trees planted in fours between the school and the carpark, echoing outdoors work that had been going on at school. P5 children at one school are now using the dens they built in class time after school, too. They don’t know it yet but by adapting and improving the design, they are working through technology outcomes.
Welcome to my classroom without walls.
Natalie White is a primary school principal teacher and a Curriculum Outdoors Attainment Challenge teacher in East Ayrshire. She tweets @natsywhite
