Outdoor learning
———— Take Forest and Nature School in Canada as an example
Classroom teaching is an important part of today’s education. It is also a manifestation of traditional teaching methods. But in a more practical sense. Teachers’ “teaching” and students’ “learning” are both practical behaviors. Education is a multi-level and multi-directional interactive process, which includes many complex psychological activities and cognitive experiences. For teachers, teaching is more than a task of imparting knowledge. They may should pay more attention to the students’ mental outlook, psychological characteristics and even the physical environment in the learning process.
From the perspective of students, whether students have a sense of identity with teaching activities will be fully reflected in the learning process.
Outdoor learning can be traced back to the way Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and even Confucius taught. The Socrates’ outdoor teaching method is considered the foundation of the Western teaching tradition. These sages chose to teach in the open air. They have been teaching outdoors for thousands of years. We can seldom see from the historical records that they had special classrooms for teaching.
This is the most primitive, simple way of teaching, education experts are still respected. Outdoor learning plays an important role in early childhood education (Sara Knight,2013) It has to be said that outdoor learning activities are a very good choice for students to learn knowledge and develop interest. And for children, the active development of colorful outdoor teaching activities not only to enhance their physical fitness but also can also improve the level of children’s intelligence.
Forest and Nature School in Canada encourages children to get close to nature, understand nature, fall in love with nature and gain more knowledge from the experience of the natural world. These schools’ teaching philosophy is based on children’s exploration and experience of the world, breaking with the pre-set way of imparting knowledge from books or electronic screens. This kind of outdoor teaching conveys the idea that children can find the joy of learning and acquire knowledge in nature in the purest way. In such a school, the administrators and the teachers are all nature lovers. They pass on the “love” to the children and at the same time let the children gain knowledge in nature. After all, children can learn more, faster and better from their hands or any part of their body.
For children, outdoor activities are more popular than boring indoor learning. Outdoor learning activities can also make many forms. For example, let the children walk, run, jump and climb in the forest so that the children’s muscles are fully exercised. Moreover, teachers can create a variety of interesting situational activities, guide children to quickly master the essentials and some basic skills of activities, let children feel the charm of knowledge and the beauty of nature in different situations.
Furthermore, In the outdoor learning, all senses of children participate in knowledge accumulation and activity experience (Birgitta Wilhelmsson, 2012) With a variety of movement is the physical body of children, through exercise to get balanced development and then get the body and mind together with the common development. It is worth noting that the exercise of children’s body should not be neglected in outdoor teaching. The purpose of outdoor teaching is not only to let children’s body and mind get full, healthy baptism and development but also to pay attention to highlight the ability of coordination within children in outdoor activities. In the process of helping each other to change the children’s self-prominent shortcomings, enhance the children’s tolerance in character.
For the makers of activities– teachers: in outdoor teaching activities, children will choose the specific content and mode of activities according to their own interests, hobbies and abilities. Because every child has individual subjective feelings and tendencies, the rich diversity of outdoor teaching provides children with different opportunities to perceive nature. In the process of developing activity teaching, teachers must take into account the variety of activity forms and teaching, fully consider the ways that every child will be interested in. It gives them different options. Therefore, teachers can choose teaching methods in different situations to achieve the goal of children’s movement in learning, so as to enhance their initiative and interest in participating in outdoor activities and teaching. For example, by leading children to observe green plants, flowers, pine nuts and other materials, teachers actively pay attention to children’s reactions and let them have a benign interaction with nature through some physical activities (Sonya Nedovic, Anne-Marie Morrissey,2013).
Last, for outdoor teaching is a very important point: teachers must strengthen the safety awareness. When children walk into the forest, the wonder of its vastness catches their attention in an instant. The teacher should pay more attention at this time. Teachers should give full consideration to some potential safety hazards. In addition, they should also have a prior knowledge of outdoor teaching venues. In the process of outdoor teaching, teachers should formulate corresponding preventive measures according to the age of children and strengthen safety supervision in outdoor teaching. Before the outdoor activities begin, teachers should talk to students about what should be paid attention to in forest teaching and how to deal with unexpected situations. In conclusion, various safety factors should be considered to minimize all kinds of risks in outdoor teaching. The number of teachers should also be guaranteed. In outdoor teaching process, strengthen the monitoring and management of teaching activities to avoid accidents.
Outdoor learning activities are rich in scenes. Learning in the forest can bring children close to nature. This way of teaching will stimulate their enthusiasm and interest in learning. In the actual teaching process, the guidance of teachers will stimulate children’s thinking ability, imagination ability, language ability, body coordination ability, teamwork ability and tolerance of various personalities. These abilities will be maximized in this way of teaching. So, outdoor teaching, forest teaching, is a perfect way of teaching. In the process of outdoor learning, teachers also need to improve their own quality, guard against safety awareness in order to add the advantages of outdoor learning to the maximum.
In addition, when the forest as the main place to impart knowledge and provides students with an ideal learning environment, it also means that people strengthen the construction of outdoor green learning space and promote the all-round development of students.
In the process of learning, students also need to find out the mystery and meaning of the harmonious development between man and nature according to this way of learning. Only in this way can the learning content be more profound and meaningful.
When teachers guide students to conduct forest education, they can appropriately conduct forest and nature knowledge teaching activities so that students have a certain understanding of the history of forests. On this basis, they can be taught the use and development of forest resources in modern society. This can let students experience the process of civilization is inexorable historical trend. They also need to have innovative ideas, thinking how to get the resources to maximize the energy development, how to make human and nature more harmonious to get along with.
When the teacher conducts outdoor teaching, the students will have a new understanding of the relationship between forest, man and nature, and will inspire students to think about these aspects. Taking students out to experience the whole process of forest will increase their understanding of forest and nature knowledge and strengthen their emphasis on the value of forest plants.