Literacy Moves Outdoors: Learning Approaches for Any Environment

Why is outdoor learning important? Research shows nature-based education can boost academic performance and support physical, mental, and emotional health. Providing outdoor learning experiences allows students to expand knowledge and apply concepts. Inviting students to connect with nature offers a chance to use their senses to explore, leading to better engagement and focus.

 

How to get started teaching literacy outdoors? Literacy Moves Outdoors provides rationale, resources, and information to help you get started and is organized to maximize learning and connect what you do outside to what you teach inside. Discover practical strategies for supporting literacy development outside the traditional classroom, as well as varied entry points, logistics, literacy connections, resources, and relevant book lists.

 

Outdoors can mean many things—a playground, a park, sidewalk, or perhaps a patch of woods—your school setting will shape how you approach outdoor learning. Learn ways to adapt to just about any environment, including indoor spaces when you just can’t get outside. You will also find beginning universal design guidelines, including ways to make learning experiences accessible to all students, enabling them to be independent and participate while still considering space, safety, and a wide range of literacy skills.

 

Explore practices that engage students, meet their interests and needs, and give them tools to communicate and discover themselves and the world around them. Pick one thing that will work for you and start moving literacy outdoors!