Can you run a math class outdoors, in a natural outdoor setting? Or should math be done in a classroom, away from distractions such as wind, rain, sunlight and clouds?
For years, math has involved sitting indoors in a classroom, working through questions in a book or on a screen. But across the country, thousands of teachers and their students are taking their math learning outdoors in what could be described as a quiet revolution to recapture the joy of learning. Math and nature can and should go hand in hand. If we simply teach and learn math in isolation there is a tendency for it to become a self fulfilling prophesy that children will become better at paper and screen based tasks and therefore tend to do more of them, and conversely they will become less able to achieve at application based natural learning experiences. Children who learn outdoors and spend time there are able to ' notice the cycles and patterns of nature, the habits of animal life, the beauty of the world around them. Learning from routine outdoor experience is not just deliberate, it is natural. (Bourne, 2000 in Bjorge,Rekstad and Pauly,2017). Outdoor learning when it is related to math means that children are able to apply critical, higher order thinking skills to math and are more capable of analyzing, applying, evaluating and creating as well as being able to simply remember and understand key math concepts.
Why can a bike with large wheels travel further with one push of the pedals than a bike with small wheels? Where is the math in cycling?
What the research says
Many researchers are hypothesising that learning in an outdoor setting has positive benefits - for the children and for the adults who support their learning. The work of Kuo and Faber Taylor (2004), based around children who have ADHD, shows us how the natural world can have a positive effect when children spend time in nature. Their research has found a link between time in a green environment outdoors and a decrease in ADHD symptoms such as lack of concentration and distractability.
We know that many children now spend extended periods of time indoors, completing sedentary activities and engaged in screen based entertainment. White (2008) found that there has been a massive decrease in physical activity amongst children over the past 20 years, and that the levels of obesity have skyrocketed. Time spent indoors has doubled and the obesity rate for adolescents has tripled in two decades.
Build on the naturally curious
Children have a natural curiosity about the world around them and the sights, smells, sounds and objects found within it. If we provide them with time in nature to absorb this ever changing sea of information for their senses, we are also providing them with time to consider what it means. This allows them to apply their learning to real world situations. They are able to notice two bikes riding along a path in a park and wonder why it is that the larger bike appears to so easily move quickly along the path compared to the smaller one. They can observe a shell on a beach and think about the movement of the waves and the patterns of the tide through the day and night that bring the shell there. They can see what happens to a container when it is left out in the rain overnight, and observe that containers of different dimensions hold differing heights of water within them. As teachers, if we capitalise on this natural curiosity and give learning a place to happen outdoors, our job is already half complete. We can then simply act as stewards who can guide the learning direction and provide the prompts and scaffolds that help put it in context.
Teaching risk takers
In a natural setting, this can mean taking some tools and learning equipment outdoors and taking a few risks with our teaching - just as we encourage our students to be risk takers. We need to challenge ourselves and accept that sometimes it might be harder to have a class finish precisely on the bell, or that some equipment might get sandy or dirty or even lost. But without taking these risks, surely there is a greater risk that looms on the teaching horizon - the risk that our students will become sedentary, indoor learners who cannot see the mathematical wonder in the world outside the doors of the classroom.
Can your students find the math in a fern leaf? Perhaps they could take a digital photo and create an image for their journal, or discover the symmetry in its fronds?
Find out more
Try taking your own class outdoors - just for an experiment to see what happens. What do you notice about their learning? How can you reflect on your own teaching practice to help support your students' learning outdoors?
These task cards for outdoor math learning can be used for holiday activities to keep learning and engagement high, or as a regular component of your school based math curriculum. There are 40 cards which you can print, laminate and share with students, or give pairs or small groups a copy of a card and see if they can complete the challenge for homework.
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