Research Report On Outdoor Learning

In Northern Ireland pupils in years 1 & 2 are in foundation stage and Key stage 1 consists of years 3 and 4and Key stage 2 consists of 5 and 6.

Children need to experiment outdoors as there is so much to learn. Children can learn in each of the areas and develop their skills. During play children are learning to socialise with each other, playing in small groups and taking turns which builds there confidence up. They also develop their motor skills through playing outdoors, running, jumping, walking and crawling. Children will learn to take risks

Roskos and Neuman (1994) too note that "from Pestalozzi to the present there has been an abiding belief in the importance of the physical environment as an agent in young children's learning" (p. 251) And that this belief forms "the cornerstone of an interactionist view of human development" (ibid). Skilled teachers, therefore, working with the age that is mentioned in this module, devise ways of doing so focusing on a variety of listening, talking, reading, and writing activities.

Security: Any outside area used by children should be secured and boundaries regularly inspected, to ensure the safety of all pupils.

Preference for outdoor play. Child A plays mostly outdoors as he believes it is more fun, and loves to investigate the surroundings. The choice of indoor play is often related to the weather, child A only plays inside when its cold or raining. It is only in severe weather conditions children have to stay in doors as in our setting we believe the children can learn and develop much more outside even when the weather is poor. Play preferences are the child’s own choices & the freedom & opportunities to be able to make those choices by enabling varied resources that are

An effective planning will help children to participate in a safe and supportive environment.To provide good opportunities for children it is important to maintain a balance between

Physical activity is important to the short term and long term health and well being of children. In the short term physical activity helps children to build muscle, develops the skeletal frame, develops the heart and lung function and helps to prevent obesity. If children have enough physical activity a day which is said to be up to an hour it can help the children get to sleep easier and for longer periods of time, this can then lead onto long term benefits as if the activity is in the garden it will also help the child to build up a good immune system so they will be less likely to fall ill to the common cold or the flu. This outdoor environment helps the over all wellbeing of the children as the outdoors makes them

The theme of this reflective account is engaging children in participation, and enabling children to have a voice. The Every child matters documentation (Department for Education 2010) focuses on the important role of the adult in enabling children to make decisions and encouraging them to participate and make a positive contribution. As a result through this account, how children in my setting are encouraged to participate in the outdoor play space will be explored. A small piece of research was carried out which will be reflected on, as will theory relating to children making a positive contribution in the early years.

DeNisco, Alison. “Year-round schooling gains popularity.” District Administration, vol.51, issue 9, Sep. 2015, pp. 15-18. EBSCOHost, web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/

“Outdoor education is in line with current thinking, but also echo’s the philosophy of the McMillan sisters. Practitioners today should be aware of the opportunities afforded by outdoor provision, not only in terms of developing children’s learning, but also with positive benefits to their health” (Cooper 2004)

My central idea for this topic is for my audience to be aware that spending time outdoors is important for the body and mind and helps you relieve stress more so than having not to spend time outdoors. Spending more time outdoors can be done in many ways and it is healthy for your body.

Finding ways to keep students interested in schoolwork and increasing their cognitive abilities has been a constant struggle for teachers. It is common knowledge that when a child’s interest wanes, it becomes harder for them to learn and retain knowledge on the subject. One tool that can be used to combat this issue would be the use of an outdoor classroom or learning outdoors. During the late 60’s and 70’s outdoor education was highly recommended in curriculum guidelines to enrich educational experiences, but later declined in the 80’s (Eaton, 1998). Today, outdoor education only plays a small role in children’s education experiences, despite the benefits it could provide. Teachers should take advantage of outdoor education to increase children’s cognitive skills, provide physical and emotional benefits, and decrease the bio phobia many children seemed to have developed.

There are a whole lot of programs or curriculums out there that try to talk about the environmental and academic needs of children. In this paper, I will try my best to discuss the five components of the

surroundings. Playing outside is a learning experience that children need to have every day. The grass

The article Daylighting Impacts on Human Performance in School argues that by manipulating the natural light that comes into the classroom can determine who better it is as a learning environment for students. The new findings that were found were that students had improved vision due to higher illumination, students had improved performance and were calmer, as well as having better memory retention. I think the study approach I appropriate. However, I think the evaluators should have picked three different schools in three different regions of the United States to get a consensus for those places that are not sunny most of the time. The author’s final conclusion is not very convincing because they state all the findings they did not find and