Learning outdoors

What’s the idea? Research has shown that spending time outdoors has numerous benefits for young people, including supporting mental wellbeing (McCormick, 2017; Gill 2011) and self-regulation (Weeland et al., 2019) as well as aiding physical development. Studies suggest that children enjoy learning outside and that their engagement is better in lessons taught outdoors (Largo-Wight et al., 2018). Given concerns over children’s increased screen time during lockdown, enabling students to take their learning outside is one way that teachers can support students' physical and emotional health as well as maintaining their engagement and motivation. This guide will explore some of the ways in which this can be done with younger pupils during distance learning. What does it mean? There are various approaches to outdoor learning but for the purpose of this guide, the focus is not on any specific pedagogy, such as ‘Forest school’, but on taking curriculum activities outside. Most re