The Outdoor Classroom

The first half term of the PGCE has started and has already given me so many ideas and inspiration for use in my classroom next year. The first thing that has captured my imagination is learning about the outdoor classroom and how essential it is to stimulate children's minds. It is important to allow children the opportunities to explore nature and their surroundings.  This supports physical development. It also lends itself to support social and emotional development.

This has been supported by our trip last week to Nell Bank Learning Centre in Ilkley. I worked with other students pond dipping, orienteering and learning about animals that live in the forest. I really enjoyed this opportunity and thought about how this could support children's learning. Stanley's stick by Neal Layton and John Hedgley is an ideal book to support literacy in the outdoor classroom. It is a story about a boy with a stick. But this is not just any stick, it is a dinosaur, a whistle and even a fishing rod.



This book can be brought to life in the outdoor classroom. I took part in a competition to find a stick (this can only be as big as between your elbow and hand.) Using this stick and any others we could find we had to build the biggest tower. This is not as easy as it sounds ---



Unfortunately, I didn't win the competition to build the biggest tower but it was fun to try and I began to imagine how much children would enjoy this task. I also thought about the different writing tasks that a teacher would be able to take from this. Children could write a diary entry from the perspective of their stick or the class could go on a stick hunt around the playground.