Outdoor Classrooms on School Sites
Title
Outdoor Classrooms on School Sites
Excerpt
An outdoor classroom supplements and stimulates the environmental conservation education program in a school. As a place for creative learning experiences, it gives depth, meaning, and new dimensions to generalizations about and understandings of man's relation to his environment.
Today, school programs often provide the only opportunity for many young citizens to learn how they depend on natural resources and how man's use and care of soil, water, and air affect our environment. Much can be learned from textbooks, lectures, and discussions. But in an outdoor classroom, children can learn directly from the natural environment as well as about it.
As an integral part of the school site, an outdoor classroom expands the learning environment readily accessible to children and teachers. Its use requires no special permit, no time-consuming arrangements for transportation, lunches, and comfort facilities, and no shifting of class schedules. More important, it is immediately available for continuous studies, for the unexpected observation, for supervised individual study projects, and for capitalizing on the "teachable moment."
Here, through working with natural resources, students learn how their decisions and behavior affect other living things and how people are affected by the way they use soil, water, air, and other living creatures.
By observing, classifying, measuring, analyzing, and interpreting phenomena, children gain not only essential learning skills but also an idea of their own relation to the natural world. As they acquire knowledge and understanding from and about the environment, they also develop some competence in evaluating alternatives for using and managing resources.
Today, school programs often provide the only opportunity for many young citizens to learn how they depend on natural resources and how man's use and care of soil, water, and air affect our environment. Much can be learned from textbooks, lectures, and discussions. But in an outdoor classroom, children can learn directly from the natural environment as well as about it.
As an integral part of the school site, an outdoor classroom expands the learning environment readily accessible to children and teachers. Its use requires no special permit, no time-consuming arrangements for transportation, lunches, and comfort facilities, and no shifting of class schedules. More important, it is immediately available for continuous studies, for the unexpected observation, for supervised individual study projects, and for capitalizing on the "teachable moment."
Here, through working with natural resources, students learn how their decisions and behavior affect other living things and how people are affected by the way they use soil, water, air, and other living creatures.
By observing, classifying, measuring, analyzing, and interpreting phenomena, children gain not only essential learning skills but also an idea of their own relation to the natural world. As they acquire knowledge and understanding from and about the environment, they also develop some competence in evaluating alternatives for using and managing resources.
Creator
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Soil Conservation Service
Relation
Program Aid Number 975
File(s)
Outdoor Classrooms on School Sites cover.jpg
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Outdoor Classrooms on School Sites Map.jpg
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