Learning Outside the Classroom

Every Child Matters aims to ensure that every child and young person has the opportunity to fulfil their potential and has 5 overarching outcomes:

• Be healthy
• Be safe
• Enjoy and achieve
• Make a positive contribution
• Achieve economic well being

School grounds can play a significant role in delivering these outcomes, providing environments where children can learn, explore, play and grow. They can help raise achievement and self-esteem, improve behaviour and health, and help children and young people develop a wide range of skills.

Learning Outside the Classroom can lead to improvements in nearly all aspects of school life, at all stages, and in 2006 earned its own manifesto (www.lotc.org.uk)

For more information on particular age groups, please select a link below:

Early Years Foundation Stage

Primary / Key Stages 1 and 2

Secondary / Key Stages 3 and 4

Early Years Foundation Stage

Playing outdoors can inspire and help young children to learn more effectively, become more active, develop their motor skills and experience nature first hand. For many, an early years setting may provide the main or only opportunity to play and learn outside on a regular basis.

The value of the outside space in unquestionable and the Foundation Stage curriculum explicitly sets out children’s entitlement to outdoor play. A well considered and used outside space will cater for active learning and play, but will also allow children to engage in and enjoy quieter, reflective play along, with many other activities.

Younger children can be fully involved in a consultation and decision making process about how their space is used (Darras Hall First School Early Years Case Study) – they usually know it as well as anyone. Encouraging, enabling and supporting staff in taking the children’s learning and play outside is very important, and a flexible approach to use of the space and its resources can be hugely beneficial (Broadway Nursery Case Study).

For more information see http://www.lotc.org.uk/2011/09/outdoor-learning-an-evaluation-of-learning-in-the-outdoors-for-children-under-five-in-the-foundation-phase/

Primary / Key Stages 1 and 2

The primary curriculum provides countless opportunities for learning outside the classroom, and you don’t need to go on a visit to do this. An existing space can be used in many different ways to address all areas of the curriculum. In addition school grounds development projects in primary schools lend themselves to a holistic approach because many of the activities involved in the process of change can be closely linked into the curriculum.

• Literacy: researching and creating a celebrity guided tour (Stephenson Memorial Primary School);
• Numeracy: interpreting and presenting results from surveys. For example, children from Darras Hall First School were asked to vote for their favourite 3 places by placing voting counters in buckets placed around the playground. Different year groups had different colours, and the children then counted, interpreted and presented the data;
• Science: understanding forces and friction using different toys on different surfaces, and a class tug of war;
• Geography: understanding local environments and micro-climates – where do the puddles form when it rains? Where is the sun and shade? Which are the windy bits?
• History: researching, developing and playing playground games from different eras;
• Art and Design: the outside space can be an inspiration or a gallery, for example sculpture, ephemeral art, fence weaving and murals; Designing a new seating or play area;
• ICT: presenting survey data, creating a walking guide of the site;
• Music: identifying and understanding natural and unnatural sounds and rhythms; creating sound maps and nature’s orchestras.

Secondary / Key Stages 3 and 4

Research by the National Federation for Educational Research (www.nfer.org.uk) and Learning through Landscapes (www.ltl.org.uk) shows that:

• The nature and quality of the outdoor school environment matters deeply to students of secondary school age
• There are educational, social, aesthetic and community arguments for improving secondary school grounds
• The process of helping to plan and implement school grounds improvements can be deeply beneficial tin terms of student learning and self-confidence, as well as staff development
• A better outdoor school environment can lead to positive changes in students’ attitudes and new resources for learning and teaching.

Large scale physical changes are not essential for effective use of the school grounds. There are many ways to use your outside space to deliver different areas of the formal curriculum, for example in other secondary schools…

• Year 10 Art students worked to a brief set by primary pupils to create a wall design for learning and play which they will outline on a designated wall in the primary school for their pupils to complete;
• Cross-year ICT project to design a new garden using 3D garden design software;
• Biodiversity survey working with BSBI (Botanical Survey of the British Isles) and publishing results online;
• Site based historical archive created by students supporting a range of curriculum areas including art, ICT, history and RE;
• Creating accurate scale models of school grounds;
• Orienteering course developed in grounds used by all year groups, supporting areas of PE, maths, social sciences;
• PE used equipment to investigate flight paths, speeds, weights, friction;
• Mapping and electronic treasure hunt using GPS technology.

Moreover, we must not forget that secondary age children still need to ‘play’, although we may use a different vocabulary.  Ensuring that young people have safe and welcoming places outdoors to socialise, eat, play football, etc., is essential to their well-being and performance at school. (Churchill Community College)