Get Ready for Summer with Outdoor Lesson Planning

Summer is finally here and we are all celebrating the longer days and being able to get outdoors more. But have you ever wondered about the best ways to incorporate the outdoors with your literacy lesson plans? In this blog post we look at how you can get ready for summer with outdoor lesson planning. 

Not only does mixing up your classroom space help keep young children engaged and excited by their learning environment, it also provides fresh ideas for teaching. An outdoor literacy lesson plan is a fun way to get creative with books and storytelling. And the best part? Outdoor learning is inclusive and immersive for all children in your care, without having to spend on extra resources and equipment. 

 

We want to keep literacy as fun as possible, as we encourage a love of reading from a young age. By changing your reading environment, you will keep young children engaged and excited at the prospect of reading together. It also proves that you can take books anywhere and may even inspire new language and ideas that may not come from a classroom environment. 

 

It would be a nice idea to share this learning with parents and carers, who may also appreciate some new ways of sharing books at home. 

 

The possibilities are endless: car journeys, at the park, during a picnic, children can enjoy literature wherever they go. By setting a positive example from outdoor lesson planning, you are opening up a world of possibility and opportunity for the children in your setting. 

 

Why consider outdoor lesson planning? 

More and more early years provisions are realising the benefits of taking learning outdoors. For starters, the environment is less formal than that of a classroom, and encourages creativity and imagination from your young children.  

 

Being outdoors is energising, uplifting and a great way to disconnect from the pressures of day-to-day life whilst getting back to nature. We all know the benefits that being outdoors can have on our mental and physical health, for both young and old. But it also helps to encourage environmental awareness, opening up conversations about the world around us. By incorporating your literacy lessons into time outside, is just another way of encouraging children to be more curious and ask questions, whilst enjoying the benefits of being outdoors.  

 

The best thing about outdoor learning is that you don’t have to have a lot of extra resources to implement it. Being outdoors offers a stimulating and engaging approach to learning and teachers can confidently weave it into the existing curriculum with minimal additional resources.

 

Taking learning outdoors can have a major impact on the learning and development of your children. From enhancing problem solving skills to communication and resilience, outdoor learning provides endless opportunities for exploration, experimentation and contextual learning.

 

5 Ways to incorporate literacy in your outdoor lesson environment... 

 

1. Think about the area you are going to be using. 

Whilst you don’t need a lot of extra resources, it is still going to be a good idea to scout out the area first. Make sure the area you plan to use is clear of hazards and there is room for the children to move about comfortably and safely. 

 

Maybe you are in a yard, where there are distractions such as the bikes and scooters, slides and climbing frames. Try to corner off an area of this outdoor space so the children can differentiate between playtime and reading time. 

 

If you are out on a school field, think about containing the children to a corner of the field so the temptation to run around isn’t too great. Remember that you are encouraging them to listen and engage with a story, so whilst running around outside is great, in this instance you are wanting the children to be listening to the book. 

 

If you have trees in your outdoor space, it can be a nice idea to mark one as “the story tree”. Gather the children around the tree and make this the space where you carry out your lesson. 

 

2. Will you need props?

Sometimes small props can help engage young children even more in the shared story. Puppets, a small item from the story or even story sacks are great ways to hold their interest and encourage children to use their imaginations. 

 

This works particularly well if you have young children who find it hard to sit still. They can be in charge of looking after a prop while you tell the story. 

 

Of course, literacy isn’t just about reading books together. You can also use the outdoor space to act out parts of a story, draw pictures of favourite characters or build dens taking inspiration from a book. 

 

3. Use the outdoors as inspiration. 

Taking learning outside can help break the repetitive cycle of lesson planning through the seasons, and can provide you with inspiration for new ways of doing things. 

 

For example, every spring you may get out the same book that shows the life cycle of a frog. You may make pictures showing how frogs begin life as frogspawn, then tadpoles etc. But if you take this book outside, the children have space to hop about like frogs. You could even make a trip to collect frogspawn in a bucket and check on it daily in the garden. Suddenly, the book you have used so many times before, creates new ideas for teaching once you have changed the environment in which you are reading it. 

 

4. Keep it simple. 

Outdoor learning doesn’t need to be fancy or overly complicated. The great thing about being outside is that a lot of your resources are already there for you. Even if your nursery or classroom setting only has a small outdoor space, you can still utilise this in your lesson planning. It is the changing of the classroom environment that children will respond positively to, not the actual size of the outdoor space. 

 

It may be a good idea to laminate books you wish to use outside, to protect their covers but also to allow them to be passed around or placed on the ground. 

 

As with any lesson plan, you are working off children’s interests. So take the children outside and see what it is they seem to enjoy playing with the most. What fascinates them in their environment? Is it the creepy crawlies or perhaps the things they can see beyond the fences? 

 

5. Introduce paints and other materials. 

As previously mentioned, literacy doesn’t mean just reading books. A lovely activity to do outside is to paint smooth rocks, to create story stones. Children can take it in turns to retell their favourite stories by using the stones as props. 

 

But you don’t need to stop at paint. Mud, sticks, plant pots or water, are all things you will find in your outdoor space and can be used in the retelling of stories or creating new pieces of art that represent a favourite book. 

 

How to use Polylino in your outdoor lesson planning: 

If you have signed up to use Polylino resources, you can easily take your books outside using a tablet or ipad. With over 650 different books, retold in 65 languages, Polylino is an  alternative and engaging way to support language development in children who speak English as an Additional Language (EAL).

 

If you haven't done so already, explore the website to see the many benefits Polylino can have in your setting for multilinguistic children. 

 

All that is left to do now, is to start your outdoor lesson planning and head into your garden or yard space and embrace the changing seasons. You will find happier, healthier children are more engaged and motivated to learn, which is just one of the many benefits of taking your lesson planning into the great outdoors. 

You may also enjoy reading “The Best Early Years Resources to help with Seasonal Planning”.