At Bluecoat Primary Academy we strive to support the holistic development of every child in our school and to help them grow into confident and responsible citizens, with a love, respect, knowledge and understanding of the natural world around them. Learning inside the classroom can be enhanced and supported by taking the learning outside into the natural environment and providing unique opportunities to learn.
What is Outdoor Education?
Outdoor Education is nature-based learning that focuses on the holistic development of the child, through a mixture of planned activities and child-led learning. Outdoor Education is a regular, long-term process, over a period of weeks or months, rather than a one-off outdoor learning activity, offering children the opportunity to spend regular sustained periods of time in a natural environment in all weathers, taking part in hands-on learning and play. This allows the children to become familiar and ‘at home’ in the natural environment and enables them to observe the features and changes to the environment, such as weather, seasonal changes and the impact of human activity on the natural environment e.g. litter. Despite the name, Outdoor Education can take place in any natural outdoor environment. At Bluecoat Primary Academy we are fortunate to have plenty of ‘green space’ which will enable us to develop our Outdoor Education within our own school grounds.
What are the benefits of Outdoor Education
Research has shown that taking part in an outdoor education programme has a positive impact on a child’s confidence, social skills, language and communication, motivation and concentration, physical skills and knowledge and understanding. Outdoor education helps children develop many skills that are harder to teach in the classroom. Outdoor education benefits include:
- physical exercise and development of strength, fine and gross motor skills.
- learning to assess, appreciate and take risks
- making sensible, informed decisions about how to tackle activities and challenges
- learning through trial-and-error which develops resilience to keep trying
- learning to be self-sufficient and take care of themselves
- independence, self-confidence, self-esteem
- creativity
- problem-solving skills
- team-work
- communication skills – some children are more comfortable to talk outside
- developing nature-connection and understanding of and care for the natural world
- the opportunity to achieve and flourish, regardless of academic ability
- calming effect on behaviour
- supporting mental and emotional health.
Click on the image above to be taken to our Curriculum Progression Document page. Here, you will find the Outdoor Education Curriculum Progression Document which outlines the progression of content taught throughout each year group.
Outdoor education ties in with many areas of the National Curriculum. For example, being outdoors year-round helps children learn about weather and the seasons, which are part of the programme of study in geography, studying mini beasts and plant life relates to the science curriculum, and working on tasks like den building and woodwork links with design and technology. Child-led outdoor activities encourage the independent application of prior curriculum teaching and learning, such as mini-beast hunting or constructing a water tight den.
