Unit 2: The Outdoor Classroom

Unit 2: The Outdoor Classroom

Target Objectives: Participants will learn about some of the benefits of teaching in a natural environment and work towards developing an outdoor teaching space in their school.

Unit Two Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this unit, participants will:

~Understand some of the developmental benefits of exposing students to natural environments.

~Discuss the ways that the plants and nature can be connected to any classroom.

~Develop a lesson plan that utilizes an outdoor teaching space or an indoor experience with living plants.

Overview

The active study of what children may be missing out on because of our culture's tendency to keep children in indoor environments is a fairly new phenomenon. Books like "Last Child Left in the Woods" detail connections to problems ranging from obesity to a lack of empathy that are linked to what is coming to be called "Nature Deficit Syndrome". One of our readings gives a detailed description of Nature Deficit syndrome.

An Outdoor Classroom is any space where you take children outside to learn. In an Outdoor Classroom the students need to know that they are not at recess, they are to observe normal classroom protocols like walking instead of running and raising their hands in order to address the class. If you have a school garden, you have a ready made outdoor classroom space. If not, you will need to be a little more creative. Is there an area in your school yard or the surrounding area that you might be able to use as an outdoor classroom? Take a walk around your building and up to the property line if possible. Is there a wooded area, or even an overlooked patch of blacktop? Can you imagine sitting in this space with students and asking them to observe what they see, feel, smell and hear? Could you take students on a walk with you to evaluate possible spaces where they think they would like to learn? Don't take all of the burden on yourself, ask the students if they see potential spots, and what would make them into great Outdoor Classrooms (seating, some potted plants?). Only you know what the possibilities might be for your particular location.

Incorporating time outside into your curriculum is not as difficult as it may seem at first. Think about the part of your curriculum that you would most like to change (math, art, science?), look at the standards and think about how you might be able to teach them utilizing outdoor spaces. I recommend introducing outdoor time gradually, spending only 10 minutes at a time outside at first until the students become more used to it and able to focus. The time outside that you provide may be the majority of time in nature that some students experience, so it is worth making the effort.

Reading

The "readings" for this unit consist of a video about the benefits of school gardening, a paper on developing environmental stewardship in preschoolers, and an article from Psychology today about Nature Deficit Disorder.

As you watch the video, keep in mind that the narrator is a business owner who sells gardening equipment. The information he gives about school gardening is valuable and backed by research, but a school gardening program does not need to have all the fancy equipment shown. Many school gardens are started by parent volunteers with a couple hundred dollars of their own money. Hydroponics systems can be created with free equipment donated by local police stations. The benefits of school gardens can also be reaped with less than $5 worth of seeds, some reused containers and soil that was collected from the schoolyard.If you are very motivated you can even harvest seeds from wild plants for free and start your garden that way. The equipment is nice, but it is definitely not the most important part of a school gardening program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Avvi_n08YeM

After reading this article, think about whether or not you agree with the idea of nature deficit disorder. Have you witnessed signs of it in your students, or in your own life?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/people-in-nature/200901/no-more-nature-deficit-disorder

What ideas does this research give you about developing environmental stewardship? Can you imagine starting a worm farm in your classroom or using any of the other aspects of their program?

http://www.tlri.org.nz/sites/default/files/projects/9260-finalreport.pdf

Group Discussion

Your post in this unit will be based on the class "readings". It must contain the following elements:

A statement of whether or not you think Nature Deficit Disorder is a real problem and why you hold this opinion.
An idea from either the research paper or video that you would like to develop in your teaching practice.
A proposal for a lesson that you could teach in an Outdoor Classroom, or a lesson that is a step in developing an Outdoor Classroom with your students, or a lesson that involves bringing plants into the classroom and using them for instruction.
A question you have about your plan for creating or using an Outdoor Classroom, or bringing plants into your classroom to connect students to nature. Your question should be designed to interest your classmates and lead to information or advice that will strengthen your eventual lesson plan.

In your responses to your classmate's posts you should provide helpful information or share experiences or resources that will deepen the class discussion.

Lesson Plan

The lesson plan for this unit must use an Outdoor Classroom, or be a step in developing an outdoor classroom. For example, your lesson may be on using your school garden to do a math lesson centered around growing plants. It could be a geometry lesson involving identifying the shapes of leaves in the wooded area near your school. It could be a science lesson on the different types of soil that could be found in your school yard. It could also be a survey of the different types of trash found in an area that you would like to clean up on your school grounds. You may use any lesson plan format that you are familiar with as long as you make sure that your objectives align with your instruction. Share your lesson plan with members of your group by Thursday. All lesson plans must be submitted as google docs in comment mode. After resolving your classmates comments, submit your final version on Monday to the professor, also in comment mode. Plans submitted to peers should not contain mechanical errors. They are not proofreading for you, they are providing constructive feedback that will make your lesson plan more effective.

Use the provided peer review questions to guide your comments to your peers. You must review the lesson plan of each member of your 4 person group by Saturday so they will have an opportunity to make revisions and submit a final version on Monday.

Peer Review Questions (Adapted From Temple University Peer Review Questions for Essays):

Are the lesson objectives stated clearly?
Do the activities within the lesson align clearly with the objectives? Are any assessments tied clearly to the objectives?
Identify any places where the rationale or procedures are unclear.How could they be clarified?
Where would you like the writer to have provided more information?
Are there any factual mistakes or logical inconsistencies? If so, where are they and why are they problematic?
Does the lesson plan seem to be appropriate for the age level it is created for?
Name two strengths of the lesson. Was there a particularly memorable detail?
Name two weaknesses of the paper. Are there any strategies you can suggest to the writer to

help him/her remedy these weaknesses?

For Further Study

More information about addressing Nature Deficit Disorder http://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/children-nature-movement/

Ready to move on? Here's what's Next

Unit 3: Making a Difference

Target Objectives: Participants will explore activist programs for children and prepare to introduce student environmental action programs to their students.

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