Stepping and Strolling into Outdoor Learning

Last week, several GDS Lower School teachers took their classes on excursions around the campus grounds, seeking out along the fences and shrubberies, pages from a wordless picture book, Journey by author Aaron Becker, posted on 21 numbered signs. 

The signs formed a trail beginning outside the Lower School front door and continuing around the block. As part of the discovery process, teachers and students followed the signs as they found them, discussing the story unfolding on the pages along the way.

The Story Stroll was created by second grade teacher Erin Lee, who laminated pages from the children’s book and thoughtfully positioned them along an outdoor walking trail. This allowed students to read the story step by step while also exploring their natural surroundings.

The purpose of the Story Stroll is to create a way for students to interactively combine reading and movement to boost focus, engagement, and comprehension. “I provided a few questions for some of the signs,” said Erin. “However, teachers will most likely come up with their own discussion questions as they walk.” 

Outdoor Learning Team

Erin is part of an outdoor learning team at the GDS Lower School that also includes fellow teachers Kathleen Dawson, Holly Balshem, Eric Friedenson, and Instructional Coach Sarah Tiamiyu. 

“The main goal of the team is to encourage teachers and students to bring their learning outside,” explained Erin. They are following an educational philosophy that the outdoors needn’t be solely for extracurricular activities, but can also serve as a rich learning environment.

Working on projects that strengthen curriculum integration with the outdoors, the team aims to create more opportunities for experiential and place-based learning using the school grounds, neighborhood, and environment as the “textbook.” These efforts also promote environmental and ecological understanding, as well as a sense of wellbeing and connection for both the students and the teachers.

“This summer, the team designed several lessons to meet the needs of our PK-4 LS community, and to get us all outside more, including the Story Stroll,” said Sarah. “Some teachers were so inspired that they even accepted the challenge to move their meeting spaces closer to the windows.”

Other outdoor classes and learning projects the teachers have been implementing include Outdoor Math, curating the on-campus greenhouse — which is also being used for the study of plant evolution in Freddy Ortega’s HS biology class, and for HS studio art texture observations — playground physics study in 4th grade science, and a Kindergarten Story Stroll. Teachers are even holding morning meetings outside. 

Outdoor Learning Leadership Conference

Much of the new outdoor programming stems from an Outdoor Learning Leadership Conference the team attended last October in Banff, Alberta, hosted by the Global Environmental and Outdoor Education Council (GEOEC), an interdisciplinary specialist council within the Alberta Teachers’ Association. Focused on helping educators to incorporate global, environmental, and outdoor education into their teaching, the council’s approach to outdoor learning is much broader than just taking students on camping trips or hiking excursions. 

Both Lower and Middle School faculty attended the conference, and for three days, our educators engaged in hands-on outdoor learning sessions and networking, enjoying keynote speakers, and spending time learning outdoors. The sessions encouraged them to think critically about how intentional learning environments, both indoors and out, can nurture focus, creativity, and joy.

Post-conference, the educators found themselves inspired to go outside more themselves, and to come up with new and innovative ways to incorporate the outdoors into their teaching practices. 

In partnership with Middle School Principal Kelsey Schroeder, Instructional Coach Jana Rupp led an experiential faculty workshop inviting teachers to rethink how learning environments and technology shape student engagement.

Using the GDS campus as a metaphor, teachers explored how different settings support different kinds of learning. The group gathered outside in the Ben Cooper Garden where they shared instructional strategies and reflected on the benefits of place-based and outdoor learning.

For the Lower School team, the conference experience also prompted frequent meetings throughout the winter and well into the spring—outside, of course–-to plot more upcoming outdoor learning adventures for faculty and students. 

“Outdoor learning has a strong foundation in pedagogical research conducted around the world and has demonstrated success across a range of state-of-the-art learning environments,” said Eric who sees the conference as a natural extension of the group’s relationship with the outdoor classroom and experiential learning that was already established before the conference. “Each of us had been practicing outdoor learning within our own disciplines, and collaborating with other teachers when we could. Kathleen had been teaming up with homeroom teachers as part of Earth Day for many years. I have been collaborating with the art, music, PE, and math teachers as part of my psychology unit since 2006. Holly had been partnering with the teachers to hold Mathematics outside for some time.”

Eric added that the conference, and especially the team collaboration, have led to an increased awareness of the benefits of outdoor learning amongst the faculty, have increased outdoor experiences for all of the lower school students, and have improved the faculty’s ability to communicate and deliver higher quality outdoor experiences for them.

The team plans to provide new outdoor learning provocations such as the Story Stroll each month to make it easy and inspiring for teachers to take their lessons into nature. In addition, the educators are currently working on a grant to build out more opportunities for outdoor learning over the summer.

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