In our last blog post, we discussed some tips for getting ready to take your students and lessons outside this coming school year. Now it’s time to think about the importance of creating routines for your students in your outdoor classroom, and we will leave you with some of our favorite ideas for routine-building activities.

Establishing outdoor routines with your students can help them engage in the natural world and provide structure for outdoor lessons. Providing consistent structure helps ease the transition out of and back into your indoor environment. Students will know what to expect from their time outside, and they will learn how to guide themselves from one activity to the next.

We will also include some ideas for transferring these routines to an online learning format as many schools are starting the school year virtually. Nature is a great way to connect with kids even when you cannot all be outside together, and you can set up outdoor learning routines for your students to do as they are able off-screen and at their own homes.

*Students gather for a photograph after a day of outdoor learning. Madison Audubon photo*

Interactive Modeling Techniques

Creating routines can be done in a variety of ways; I am going to describe a technique called Interactive Modeling (more on Interactive Modeling can be found here). Let’s jump into the scenario of how to teach your students what to do when they reach your outdoor classroom space.

First, model for the students what they should do once they make it to the outdoor classroom by demonstrating the routine yourself. This could be sitting in a designated spot, forming a circle, moving right into sit spots, or breaking into small groups. Once you have modeled the correct way for students to engage with your routine, ask them what they noticed about how you completed the routine.

Then, ask for student volunteers. Have the entire class watch as these students perform the routine in the expected manner. Again, ask for the class to give observations about what they noticed about the correct way to complete the routine.

Finally, have the whole class practice the routine and provide feedback for them. It may take several times for students to get a handle of the routine, so keep practicing and teaching until they have it down. This same process can be used to model how students should act and participate on video calls, and will similarly help students anticipate and understand your expectations for a particular activity.

Outdoor Activities

Here are some examples of activities that you could incorporate into your outdoor routine. No matter the content, these routines will build the capacity of students to observe, ask questions, study change over time, and connect with their surroundings. Use these ideas creatively to give students voice and choice as they learn; we have included ideas for virtual adaptations.

Nature Journals

Nature Journals are the shapeshifters of outdoor education; they can take many forms and you can adapt them to fit your expectations. The first step is to create journals for your students to personalize or to have students make their own. The format can be modified to fit the needs of your students. Allow the structure of the journal to mirror the structure of your lesson. For example, pages could be blank, lined, or a combination of both. An easy way to make journals is to staple pieces of paper together. To get more involved, check out simple ways to book bind or use thin cardboard to make covers.

You also get to decide how you want students to use their nature journals. It might be a place for individual reflection, or you may have specific prompts for students to follow. Here are some examples:

*These are some examples of how to format journal pages.*

Nature journaling could begin or end each lesson, or be used occasionally for specific lessons. We love that they are versatile and personal to each class and each student.

Make it virtual! Nature journaling is an easy way to get outdoor education into virtual learning. Since you won’t be there in-person to help kids write, create a routine that is flexible with how students journal. Offer options for drawing or writing, let kids write in their dominant language, or tell them not to worry about spelling and punctuation. Videos are another way to allow students to share their journaling work.

Variations on Nature Journals:

*A student documents a feather in their nature journal. Madison Audubon photo*

Scientific Journaling: Nature journals can become scientific journals if science is one of the areas where you feel comfortable teaching outdoors. Use your students’ science notebooks and add places for illustrations, observations, or other activities that align with your lessons.
Phenological Journaling: Phenology is the study of cycles and seasonal variations. Your students’ journals could document how your natural space is changing over the course of the year. This can also tie-in to weather circles that will be discussed below.

If you’re interested in learning more about nature journaling, check out our nature journaling page.

Sit Spots

*A student sits on the grass and observes their surroundings while working on a nature journal. Madison Audubon photo*

Sit spots are places where students have the opportunity to individually observe the world. Students return to the same sit spot multiple times in order to connect with their own little space. This activity can be done in any amount of time depending on the age of your students, the time of year, and the plan for the rest of the lesson. It provides ample opportunity for students to really get to know one place. They will see their place change over the course a year in small snippets. As an educator, you can lead a guided sensory inventory (going through what students see, hear, smell, touch, etc), or let students structure the time in their own way. Sit spots can pair with nature journaling if you want students to document what they are noticing about their little space.

Make it virtual! If your classroom is in-person, sit-spots allow kids to maintain a safe physical distance from each other. If you’re learning virtually, students can pick a sit spot anywhere: in their home looking out of a window, in their yard, or in a local park.

8-minute Notes

8-minute notes is a way to guide observation and journaling. Have students divide a nature journal or notebook page into four parts with a large plus sign. See the example on the right.

Students will have two minutes to work in each quadrant. You can personalize what you would like students to work on for those two minutes. Examples include writing what they observed, drawing a picture, analyzing a change, or spending time documenting what they are feeling with four different senses.

Make it virtual! This activity could be done over a video call as long as all students have access to a nature journal, notebook, or piece of paper. If you are able to have students seat themselves by a window, some of the observations could be done on the outdoors. You could also adapt this lesson for students to complete on their own time with prompts that you create beforehand.

Nature Walks

Nature walks are similar to nature journals in that they can be adapted to fit the needs of your students. A simple option is to walk around your outdoor classroom to get oriented to the space and to help your class transition to the lesson. Once students are comfortable with this routine, take nature walks through neighborhoods or walk to and through a local park. Nature walks can also be used to stimulate curiosity, observe phenology, or provide time for reflection. You can use nature walks to structure a whole lesson if you have places to stop along the way for students to explore, complete activities, or listen to instruction.

Make it virtual! Nature walks are difficult to recreate virtually. It’s hard to know whether all of your students will be able to get out on a walk: they all have different home lives, and the adults in their lives have different work schedules. There are, however, some fun digital alternatives that you can explore. Make a video of yourself on a nature walk and share it with your students. If there are places familiar to your students where you can go, have them guess where you went. Take a tour of a national park or another place that you wouldn’t be able to visit as a class. Have students walk through their home as if it were an unknown habitat. Have fun playing around with the resources that students will have available to them with online learning.

“These Three Things” Scavenger Hunt

Use a scavenger hunt as a way to spark interest in a new topic or as a way to quickly assess what you have been teaching. Tell students to find three things. Some examples include:

*Students review items to find on their outdoor scavenger hunt. Madison Audubon photo*

A bird flying, walking, and standing still
A bird will yellow on it, a bird with red on it, a bird with black on it
An animals’ home, sign of humans, sign of an animal
An animal track, a human footprint, a sign of an animal that is NOT a footprint
A living insect, a dead insect, sign of an insect
A mammal, a reptile/amphibian, a bird
A green leaf, a fall-colored leaf, a leaf skeleton
A bird nest, a squirrel nest, a hole in a tree that an animal might live in

This can be done in groups or individually. Students can document their responses in their nature journals or just complete the activity for fun!

Make it virtual! These types of scavenger hunts can be done on a video call or as an independent activity. Use your lesson to guide what things you want your students looking for or gathering.

Circles

Gathering in a circle as a class can be a great way to start or end a lesson as it brings the group together and gives each student a place to be. Here are a couple of ideas for circle activities that can be used in many different formats.

In a weather check-in circle, students will observe what the weather is doing on a particular day (ie. what the sky looks like, what the clouds are doing, how windy it is, what the temperature is). This is a space to introduce vocabulary and practice concepts that you might be learning about. Take this circle check-in and expand it to fit your lessons; maybe you will have a circle check-in about the science, literacy, or math concepts that you have been working on in a particular lesson.

*Students gather in a gratitude circle. Madison Audubon photo*

Gratitude circles are another kind of circle activity. Each student has the opportunity to share something meaningful. These circles can help students draw on prior knowledge they may have about a lesson, or show what they have learned. Some groups like to have everyone sitting, others standing. Some hold hands, or did, pre-Covid. You could have kids go around the circle as they share, or raise their hands to volunteer. Some teachers ask kids to share something specifically about nature or outdoor learning that they’re grateful for, others don’t place restrictions on the gratitude.

Make it virtual! These activities work well over video. Each student can share and then call on a classmate. They can be a great way to establish video call expectations and for students to connect as a whole class in the virtual environment.

Strong routines can take the pressure off of you, the educator, and the students because everyone knows what to expect from the outdoor classroom. Use these ideas or come up with your own; either way, have fun figuring out what will engage your students as you move some of your learning outside or into the natural environment.

Whether your classroom is online, in-person, or a combination, these activities can be set-up to fit your needs. Students will benefit from the time they spend outdoors, no matter how it is structured. Tune in for our next post which will go more in-depth on how to combine outdoor education and virtual learning.

Written by Rachel Lee, Madison Audubon summer educator

Cover photo by Madison Audubon