The Outdoors Meets the Digital World

The Outdoors Meets the Digital World

Related image
(image retrieved from: Techie Homeschool Mom)


Opportunities: This year our intermediate teams made up of grade 3-4 students are focusing on outdoor education and have asked me to partner with them during my flex blocks.  My flex blocks are 90 minutes of time that teachers can sign up to work with me on a project or individual lessons once a week.  For term one I have teaching opportunities around Adrienne Gear writing, internet safety, genius hour, and outdoor education. 

Key Words: Last year our big focus was Learning in Depth and I would have had a plethora of key words including digital learning like inquiry, questions, safe sites, curiosity, independence, ERAC and kid friendly search engines.  This year with outdoor education being a focus my key words are documentation,  research, portable devices, curricular connections, urban life, reference materials and tech tools.

Curriculum: BC's New Curriculum lists a big idea for grade 4 science as "all living things sense and respond to their environment."  We are in an urban setting and how car traffic and pavement impact bugs and marmots and the oak trees in our outdoor space would make for an interesting inquiry.  We have a mother duck that flies over our rooftops and into our inner courtyard each year to lay her ducklings.  Our staff come in on the weekend to lead her and her babies, who cannot fly, out through the doors and back to a nearby pond.  Could we video the process?  Could we find a site that lists the growth in an egg day by day?  Could we graph the growth and estimate when the babies will hatch? 

Students are expected to know "plants response to light, touch, water and gravity."  Could students analyze which plants grow where and why in our school yard?

Broadening My Understanding of Outdoor Education: It would be wise to dive in further to the Reggio Emilia Approach.  "Reggio Emilia uses a child centred approach and project based learning.  Projects can evolve anytime." (Reggio Emilia Education, 2019).  Although this is typically for early primary students, our district and primary classes have taken some steps to adopt this approach and as the hub of the school in the LLC it makes sense to learn more about it.  Also, the Reggio Emilia Approach would tie in nicely with outdoor education. 


In conjunction with Reggio Emilia and the project based approach would be digital literacy.  How do I keep students safe and heading to factual sites while 

Looking at Apps for iPads would be helpful along with the ERAC resources we have such as National Geographic.

Seeking out teacher blogs about outdoor education is on my list of things to do.

Another goal for this year is to work on updating my resource section.  At this time it would make sense to update it with resources linked to geography and natural sciences. 


REFERENCES

BC's New Curriculum.  Science Grade 4.  retrieved from: https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/curriculum/science/4

Reggio Emilia Education. 2019.  retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2hCebmT4c


Comments

  1. Aaron MuellerSeptember 19, 2019 at 7:03 AM

    Good brainstorm blog with your interests, goals and current initiatives within your school community. You mention a few keywords that might not be effective to search with on their own " documentation, research, portable devices, curricular connections, urban life, reference materials and tech tools." All of this on their own, without extra contextual key words might not be very effective. Outdoor Education + curricular connections for example could be much more effective. Reggio Emila is also a very effective "umbrella" term that when coupled with other keywords from your list, like 'research' and 'urban life' could be super useful. Overall, a great start with a lot of options and connections to your school community goals.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outdoor Education Keywords and the LLC

Image
Outdoor Classrooms and the Literature (Photo retrieved from Catherine Nickerson of ASM's outdoor garden) I read three articles and two blogs around outdoor gardens and school goals in elementary schools.  The idea of students taking their learning outside seems to be popular.  In urban settings, what that looks likes varies significantly.  School gardens are common, like the one show above from ASM itself.  What is less common is taking the actual inquiry in the broader context of science, socials and library learning commons support to the limited outdoor spaces we have access to.  Megan Zeni seems to be a leader in the field and she is a local BC teacher from the lower mainland.  What follows are the annotated bibliographies on the readings around outdoor classrooms. Outdoor Classroom - Blog by Megan Zeni - Garden Literacy A big take away from Megan Zeni's Outdoor Classroom blog is that learning is fluid from outside to inside.  Taking ...
Read more

AS Matheson's Reference Collection

Image
AS Matheson's Reference Collection Well here is a sorry state.  Our reference collection on countries is housed in a "behind" shelf in an out of the way, low traffic area.  My goal is to create a more child centered reference area.  At the forefront of my mind is bringing in books that answer the wonderings of the inquiry based projects that the teachers are presenting to the students.  "A good reference source is one that serves to answer questions, and a bad reference source is one that fails to answer questions." (Reidling, 2013).  I love the simplicity of this statement.  It's time to organize the reference section to one that has a purpose and is interesting! Instead of creating a rubric, which I know is taking a risk since our assignment asks us to do so, I have created a goal for each of the following categories.  Relevancy, purpose, currency, curricular connections and efficient use of space.  Think of it as category 5 in a ...
Read more