This week I will be reflecting our on second in-situ experience celebrating Take Me Outside Day (TMO Day)!
Description
Today we celebrated TMO Day with Mrs. Gaudon’s grade 2 class from Gordon Terrace Elementary School! The idea behind TMO Day is to spend one hour outside engaging in outdoor learning. It is an initiative to get kids connected with nature, to spread awareness about and to encourage outdoor learning! The official day is October 23rd, we celebrated a day early, but it’s never to early to celebrate enjoying the outdoors if you ask me! When we got to the school, we partnered up with another teacher candidate and then were assigned two students from the class to work with. Before we started our activity the students were reminded of the book that acted as the starting point for today’s activity: “The Leaf Man” by Lois Ehlert. Then our class presented a brief presentation about local wildlife we may see at Elizabeth Lake (our destination), fun facts, and their Ktunaxa names. The materials we needed for our outdoor learning were an iPad, googly eyes (optional), and nature! We walked from the school to the lake, buddied up with the little ones, and then got started on our project. The task to complete was to create similar artwork as pictured in the book, using raw natural materials to create an animal sculpture! After some brainstorming Carter and I’s two students both decided they wanted to create a snake! We picked fallen leaves as a group, making sure to leave nature the way we found it, then once we had enough materials, our students made the snake body and head while we tried to block the wind from blowing the leaves. To make the head they used leaves, googly eyes, and some pebbles for teeth! To capture a photo of our creation both of the students had a turn using the iPad to photograph the sculpture. After creating, the students played outside digging a little hole with some sticks, enjoying their outdoor time before walking back to the school. Once we returned to the school, the kiddos showed us how to upload images to Seesaw using their iPad’s and gave us little pens as gifts!
Feelings
I was feeling very appreciative during the in-situ, it was wonderful to get the opportunity to work with students again and it was even better that we got to go outside with them. Kids spend so much time sitting in schools, and it was great that we were able to get some physical activity in and enjoy the sunshine. During the Elizabeth Lake visit it was heartwarming to see the kids just having fun being out in nature, exploring, and being creative. Building connections with our students was a big plus, as we had lots of time for conversations! Overall, the experience was very positive.
Evaluation
The positives of the experience for me were teaching kids to use their creativity and imagination with nature to produce artwork! Spending time outside was awesome as I could tell the students really appreciated and enjoyed their outdoor learning time connecting with nature. I found a lot of joy in getting to know the students, their interests, and personalities. The only con I had from the experience was getting our students to stay on task. As soon as we finished building our snake, the students became very excited about playing with sticks to dig a little hole in the ground. Some other groups continued to make more sculptures, but we let our students explore with nature and they worked as a team, sharing their digging “tools,” I took it as a win for excellent development of collaboration and teamwork skills!
Analysis
Much of the success of today’s in-situ experience was thanks to Mrs. Gaudon. She had front loaded her class by introducing “The Leaf Man,” discussing the project and expectations of the outdoor learning experience. Additionally, our class presentation about local wildlife also helped the students prepare for their art task, as we gave them ideas of animals to create and use as a starting point for their sculptures. The students were only required to create one animal, but I think we could have kept students more on task if there was an allotted time set for creating and then time set for exploration and play!
Conclusion
Today my main takeaway was the importance of outdoor learning. The in-situ made me realize how much I would like to emphasize outdoor learning in my future classroom as I believe it boosts students’ engagement with the content and piques their interests! I also loved learning how outdoor lessons can be used to promote physical activity which is so important for healthy physical and mental development. To make this situation better for everyone involved, discussing walking expectations prior to our Elizabeth Lake trip would have reduced the amount of students needing safe walking reminders! Additionally, to keep students on task I would have set time parameters for first sculpture building, and second play and exploration. This would have ensured the students knew the expectations and would have encouraged additional sculpture creating until play time.
Action Plan
Moving forward, if I was to recreate this project, I would introduce the assignment in the same way. Front loading with the book and the presentation of local wildlife. Where I would differ, is I would let the students know we have a set working time for art and then have built in time for play and exploration. This would encourage students to keep building until the timer goes off and then we can just have fun exploring nature in a non-task-based way! I would be sure to reiterate class walking expectations and safety rules before heading to the lake. Finally, I would implement a gallery walk down at the lake which may encourage kids to keep building animals from nature, inspired from their classmates’ ideas. Or, once we returned to the class, we could do a gallery slideshow on the board showing each group’s photos of their sculptures as this would likely increase the students’ motivation to focus on the sculpture building.