School of Thought

The Benefits of Outdoor Based Curricula

  

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The Benefits of Outdoor Based Curricula
Linda Price-King, Middle School Director

 “Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.” John Lubbock

             The outdoor classroom is a luxury for most schools, whether they are in the inner city or in suburbia.  Consequently, teaching children about stewardship has mainly been a classroom exercise attempted through the use of books and movies.  However, we know that this is not the best way to teach about such things because “environmental responsibility is best learned outdoors.”  Ford and Blanchard state that “outdoor activities can create an initial sensitivity toward the environment, the first and essential step on the path toward increased understanding of environmental processes, increased understanding of our place in, and dependence upon, the ecosystem, and...to action on behalf of the environment.”   The National School Board Association (NSBA), has shown that spending time outdoors enhances student performance and mood. This notion has been supported by other research, including a study by Janus, which revealed that third grade students who experienced the curricula in an outdoor classroom setting demonstrated a 30% increase in knowledge retention.   

            It is well-known that students learn best in multi-sensory settings.  Nature provides tremendous potential for multi-sensory learning, by engaging the senses of touch, smell, hearing, and vision.  These kinds of kinesthetic learning experiences help students’ brains retain knowledge more effectively.  The sense of adventure that many students experience when working outdoors could also be viewed as another sense used during an outdoor lesson.  During such activities each child experiences something unique and they retain ownership of the memory and the feelings that accompany the experience.  Experiential learning not only impacts children’s ability to retain information but also instills good feelings about learning in general.

            In industrialized cultures, children often do not have opportunities to be part of and to learn about nature.  Our indoor sedentary lifestyles have literally sheltered children from the natural light, the calming sounds of nature, the feel of the wind, the aromas of plants, and the beauty of the seasons and the wild.   For this reason alone, outdoor classrooms can provide opportunities for slowing down and for reflecting, as well as gaining a lifetime of understanding of our connection to the natural world.  Our children should have opportunities to not only understand their connection to the world around them but to become immersed in its gifts.  Teachers, administrators and parents can provide opportunities to learn the facts about our world and also to experience its wonder and amazement.   This will not only give our children a love for nature but instill a deeply rooted sense of stewardship.    

Chesapeake Bay Academy: Go Green: fox43tv.com