Outdoor learning in languages
Our outdoor environment offers a resource and an opportunity to develop and extend languages learning at all levels. It provides a real context in a range of ways including for:
- Play e.g. outdoor games, playground games etc.
- Inspiration for L2 descriptive writing e.g. describing our local environment
- Developing our literacy and numeracy skills e.g. counting activities outdoors, using natural resources for literacy activities (for examples, writing with pebbles etc.)
- Developing our health and wellbeing e.g. listening and looking at our natural environment and reflecting on how this makes us feel
- Activities which encourage us to engage in ecological, social, or cultural issues in our local environment e.g. activities linking to ecology, STEM, conservation, and the environment
Language learning can easily be developed outdoors in a range of innovative and engaging ways. By reflecting upon our local environment as a resource we can begin to see possibilities for how we can develop our language learning outdoors. A useful starting point for planning is to reflect on the key features of your local environment. Going for a walk around the school grounds with colleagues or learners and considering how the environment could be used to enhance language learning can be a useful approach to inspire initial ideas. Some other ideas for language learning outdoors are shared below:
- Playing games outdoors e.g. playground games, language learning games
- Exploring our environment e.g. describing the changing seasons, our natural environment, identifying birds, trees and plants, keeping a weather diary etc.
- Developing literacy outdoors e.g. labelling school areas, using natural resources to create texts, writing outdoors with playground chalk, creating pavement poetry, reading texts and questions pinned around the school grounds etc.
- Developing numeracy through language learning outdoors e.g. surveying school grounds/local area, counting and tallying objects, numeracy games etc.
- Using our environment for dictionary skills activities e.g. dictionary treasure hunt activities, dictionary scavenger hunt activities i.e. finding an item as part of a scavenger hunt (a leaf, for example) and then finding the translation in a bilingual dictionary
- Developing learning across the curriculum e.g. PE warm ups, map making outdoors, arts and crafts in the target language
- Walking and talking activities e.g. organising learners into pairs or groups, presenting a question to them and asking them to consider this as they walk and discuss
- Sensory activities e.g. describing what you can see, smell, hear etc.
- Environmental activities developed through, or linked to, the target language e.g. litter pick, BioBlitz, plastic audit etc.
The Education Scotland Outdoor Learning website provides a range of guidance and resources for practitioners.
As with other areas of learning, by engaging with learners around their experiences of learning languages outdoors, we can assess its impact on their enjoyment of and in language learning.
