Taking learning outside is a common goal for teachers.
Social media is flooded with images of fun outdoor learning activities and trips into the playground or natural areas around the school for one-off inspirational lessons.
But the question is how to incorporate outdoor learning in a meaningful, purposeful way that children will want to engage in regularly.
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To answer this, I posed a question to my Year 5 class.
How primary schools can make the most of outdoor learning
I asked: “What kind of things would you want outside to improve the outdoor area for you to learn and play in?” Here are their responses and some practical ideas for how to make them a reality.
1. A stage
This one surprised me. I don’t tend to think of Year 5 as the most confident at standing up on a stage, dressing up and performing. I dug a little deeper. Their idea was to use a staged platform to perform their writing from English lessons, to give it greater purpose and a clear sense of audience.
In a time where we are constantly asked to consider purpose and audience for writing, I love this idea. Using wooden crates and a bit of imagination, this is an easy hook for writing to be used outside.
2. Storytime tents/huts
My class loves storytime at the end of the day, so I was thrilled when this idea popped up. Using a small marquee tent, sheltered campfire area or teepee, we could create a key stage 1 and KS2 story Sshed, where teachers could take their class down to read the class book as a special treat.
There was strong emphasis on having two separate huts for each key stage, so they could be decorated and tailored to classic tales for each group. Decoration ideas included cut-outs of characters, quotes and original opening lines, props from famous books and a “reading throne”. As an avid reader myself, I love this one.
3. An excavation site
An excavation site can have many different links. It could offer Ancient Egyptian finds, dinosaur fossils or the crash landing of a plane in the Second World War…
As the children pointed out, it would make a great inspiration day or hook for learning about a new book or topic. All you need is a few repurposed sand pits and some props and tools.
4. Gruffalo story trail
Follow the trail taken by the mouse and the Gruffalo in the book. This would be a fantastic way to spark a love of reading very early on in school, and my Year 5 class said you could even have older children lead younger children around the trail, reading the story as they go.
You could also try different picture books; The Highway Rat and The Very Hungry Caterpillar jump to mind!
5. A ‘poetree’ trail
The children in my class love poetry, as do many other children. They came up with the idea of laminating various poems or verses and hanging them from trees in the outdoor area, so children could read them independently outside.
This could also be linked to a treasure hunt with children having to find all the “leaves” of poetry around the playground. A trail like this could also be applied to times tables, numbers to 10, 20 or even 100, phonics and spellings, too.
With these five ideas, you could start to transform your outdoor learning provision for very little cost but with very high reward, creating areas children actually want to use and learn in.
Cathy Cooper is a Year 5 Teacher in Leeds. She tweets at
@MissC_primary_
