Young children are natural learners. They bring a sense of curiosity and construct their own understanding about the world that is unfolding around them.  Providing a natural, safe, rich and engaging outdoor playscape will develop the whole child in terms of physical, cognitive, social, emotional and spiritual well-being.  Our project entailed investigating instructional strategies to support learners with thinking, reasoning, understanding and communicating their learning.  Through the triangulation of data we used questioning and documentation to capture student voice and built the foundational skills of Literacy and Numeracy in a naturally stimulating environment.  We wanted to explore how might we transfer a traditional indoor environment to a natural playscape where the principles of the Kindergarten Program.

 

What new professional learning did you acquire as a result of this project?

We were fortunate to take a few web courses and participate in a nature network geared towards children in the natural environment.  We learned how to ask questions about student learning and when not to ask questions but to simply observe the student interactions.   We grew to appreciate the child's perspective and utilize their perspective to better understand their learning. We documented behaviours and watched how they decreased with the increase in time spent outdoors.  Furthermore, we learned the importance of experiencing the curriculum outside of the four walls of a classroom.

We learned to use our Google drive and its apps.  We used technology such as iPods, iPads and GoPros to take videos and photos to refer to at a later time.  Our confidence in using technology increased dramatically in the past year.  We used technology to create portfolios for each child as well as to communicate with parents (Seesaw app).  We created a family survey using the google forms.  We kept track of our expenses and our data we collected with our survey using Google sheets.  We also created a slideshow using Google Slides in our quest for pea gravel when our board wanted to use install artificial turf over the summer holidays.    

We participated in collaborative learning opportunities where team members developed their leadership skills.  We took turns leading the learning and had many roundtable discussions.  We used pedagogical documentation and technology to record all of the learning for our team members as well as for the students themselves as they saw their own growth throughout the year.  We took what we had learned and put into practice new outdoor spaces that are more engaging and natural for the children to play in.  We have added natural elements such as pea gravel, wood, and water.

 

How has what you’ve learned through your TLLP project impacted you as a teacher?

Through our project, we have learned how the outdoor environment helped to regulate student behaviour.  Students could self regulate outdoors naturally.  If a student would have difficulty regulating themselves in a classroom, they seem to naturally self-regulate with the nature that surrounds them. Students seem to use rocks, twigs, or leaves that were around them to play with while listening to teacher instruction. We learned that all students can learn at their own pace when you are in an outdoor learning environment.  Through this we recognized the children’s need to experience the outdoors and for us as educators, to allow them to experience the outdoors.  We have learned to stop always saying “no” and instead we have learned the importance of explaining safety/normal expectations and trusting in the children to meet the expectations independently instead of always by our instruction.  Children know their own limits and usually don’t go beyond their comfort level.  What we learned the most, is that we cannot control Mother Nature, and sometimes, our best laid plans go out the window and something even better happens.  For example during one art class, students were painting with mud, but their interest was caught in the water and how it was running to a lower point in the yard.  Greater discussion was held by the students and they were trying to figure out how to block the water (damming it) or allowing objects to float down stream from the high point.  Involving families right from the beginning of the school year and keeping them informed of our program project expectations helped to foster positive relationships between the classroom and the families.  Families were supportive and encouraging throughout our process because we included them.

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Based on this experience what would you like to learn next?

We would like to further our research about forest and nature kindergarten and early year programs here in Canada and in Great Britain.  We want to further explore how we could go about opening or having a nature based full-time kindergarten program here within our board and how to become certified forest school teachers.  We want to continue learning about the benefits of our outdoor programs and how to expand these programs and teaching practices to grades 1-8.  We would like to continue to use the Google Drive and become more proficient in all the apps such as Docs, Photos, Slides, Sheets and Forms.  These apps helped us share information and the learning with our team members as well as our board colleagues and families in our Kindergarten and our Grade 1 programs.  We have learned through this project that children will adapt to any type of weather and that they really enjoy being outside.  We saw their confidence and leadership skills grow when we took a step back and became observers in their outdoor inquiry and experiences.  As adult learners, we too became more confident and more willing to try new things outdoors and were always dressed and ready to participate in outdoor explorations and inquiries along side our students.  We have had a lot of positive feedback  from families, upper administration and from our colleagues about the learning that is happening because of this project.