Outdoor Classroom in the European Context Erasmus Project

Project Title

Outdoor Classroom in the European Context

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Health and wellbeing; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Creativity and culture

Project Summary

We are a school of approximately 730 students. We have identified a specific need for development in the area of outdoor education, specifically educating children IN the outdoors, rather than ABOUT the outdoors. We have recognised as a school that we currently do not spend a sufficient amount of time teaching outdoors to impact the overall well-being of the children. At the time of application, 100% of our teaching staff spent on average less than one-hour teaching outdoors a week, with over half of those spending less than 15 minutes or none at all teaching outdoors weekly. In addition, 85 % of our teachers spent less than 2 hours in outdoor well being activities.

We have four partner schools in the project – Portugal, Italy, Slovenia and Finland. All four have demonstrated exemplary communication to date and a strong motivation to meet our common objectives. Robust lines of communication have already been established through a variety of digital platforms, including (but not limited to) etwinning and twinspace, email, mobile messaging apps and shared google drive. Plans are in place for regular video meetings via zoom commencing in September 2020.

Our motivation for this project is to drastically improve our time spent as teachers teaching the curriculum outside and providing students with learning opportunities in the outdoor spaces. We intend to employ the help of leading experts in the field of outdoor education in order for us to improve our knowledge and the knowledge of our partner schools in this way. We intend to liaise with each partner school in order for us to create best practice exemplars and maximise our outdoor learning environment. The long-term benefits we aim to accomplish from this project is an increased time spent teaching the curriculum outside, which will then in the long-term improve the student’s well-being, health, and wellness.

We also aim to specifically target our early years providers to maximise the usage of outdoor spaces, especially in relation to the Early Childhood Curriculum Framework which celebrates early childhood as a time of being, and of enjoying and learning from experiences as they unfold. Innately, this framework incorporates outdoor learning experiences, for which we currently have neither the resources or training to provide.

Our second specific target is the area of STEM education. We believe that being outdoors is a natural stimulant of wonder and curiosity for children. We will facilitate STEM projects by encouraging children to question and investigate, using the natural surroundings as a stimulus.

Our specific aims are as follows:
To create an outdoor learning space in order to facilitate curricular learning
To measurably increase the time spent on outdoor learning
To improve attitude toward outdoor activities and cross weather exposure
To employ nature as a stress-relieving and well-being tool
To improve early learning practice through the use of outdoor space (Aistear)
To facilitate STEM learning through active questioning and investigation
To develop, refine and implement an outdoor learning pack suitable for each class level and curricular subject.
To improve teacher motivation to teach outdoors as a result of outdoor learning

We intend to begin creating tangible resources early in the first year of our two year project. We, along with our 5 partners, have agreed to produce cross curricular packs of work for each of the age groups in our school, phased in on a three-monthly basis. There will be ongoing communication between our schools as we collaborate on these packs of work. We intend the first of our packs to be complete, and the second to be underway by the time we take part in our first mobility (in early Spring, 2021). We will therefore have some experience to draw on, questions to ask, relationships built and thus hope to get the most from our transnational visits.

Our second year will focus more on thematic learning – cultural, natural, technological perspectives of outdoor learning. We hope to expand on the strong foundations we have established in our initial year to explore current themes in education, and to delve more into the possibilities of outdoor learning. Our transnational mobilities this year will have similar focuses.

Results – As mentioned above by the end of the project we will have a pack of cross-curricular and thematic lessons for all primary age groups. We have already completed initial surveys to assess current uses of outdoor learning. We plan to conduct further quantitative surveys to graph changes in school behaviour at the end of the project. As we will also be focusing on wellbeing throughout the project a more qualitative approach will be taken here to assess impact. We have planned a comprehensive dissemination of our project using the Twinspace facility on etwinning, our own school websites and through a mixed media approach of documents, analysis, videos and photographs.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 96525 Eur

Project Coordinator

St. Paul’s NS & Country: IE

Project Partners

• Agrupamento de Escolas de Vialonga
• Osnovna sola Log – Dragomer
• Länsikaaren koulu
• SCUOLA MEDIA “T. TASSO”