Thank you to Mrs Lorimer, an NQT teaching Year 4 at Lace Hill Academy, who shared her thoughts about outdoor learning training and how she approached maths outdoors.
Having had the opportunity to experience outdoor learning with Jo, it has given a completely different perspective of learning outdoors as a practitioner. Quick, simple ideas using natural resources outside can quickly engage one and elicit some brilliant discussions. Following the outdoor training, I put my learning into practise.
We are currently learning about statistics and decided to create a human scatter graph for one lesson and collect natural objects from around the play area to create our own tally chart. Having made note of the results for the latter, the children had to create their own pictogram or bar graph plotting the results using the shared success criteria for graphs.
The children thoroughly enjoyed the outdoor learning and I could immediately identify the benefits which included higher levels of motivation, meaningful discussion and thinking skills and an improved attitude to learning.
Some of the pupil comments included:
‘I cannot wait to go outdoors again, it is so much more fun.’
‘ Now I understand how data can be collected.’
‘I found equivalent fractions challenging even using the fraction wall resource did not help me. Mrs. Lorimer took me outdoors and we used sticks of the same length and started breaking them up to help show me equivalent fractions. It made so much more sense.’
