Outdoor Learning – Equity for all

Natalie White
East Ayrshire Council
Learning Outdoors Support Team (LOST)
@natsywhite @eaclost
 Equity of Learning
Opportunity…

• National Improvement Framework

• Scottish Attainment Challenge
• National Performance Framework
• Dr Bird/Richard Louv
 East Ayrshire
Curriculum Outdoors Attainment Challenge
(COACh)
This programme has been put together to support teachers in embedding
outdoor learning as a realistic context for learning. It aims to enhance
provision and make meaningful connections for pupils between classroom
learning and their self, community and environment.
There are five components to the programme;
1. Building Staff Capacity
2. Research
3. Parental Engagement
4. Partnerships and Wider Achievement
5. Resources
Each of these components are worked on simultaneously over an
academic year, with inputs delivered weekly.
 Literacy

Literacy

 Listening and Talking – sharing stories, listening

to set texts, discussing characters and plots,
collaborating to build dens, re-telling journeys
 Writing – creating characters, inventing stories,
using adjectives to describe scenes/events,
writing journal entries on personal experiences,
functional writing, instructional writing
 Reading – Listening to stories then re-reading
passages when they return to school, reading
fact sheets and using keys to identify trees, bugs
and lichens.
Numeracy and
Mathematics
 Angles – around us in our
environment, building
most effective dens
 Vocabulary – ordinals,
measurement
 Number – forwards and
back, calculations
 Shape – properties, 2D,
3D
 Health and Wellbeing

 Physical Activity and Active play –

normalise outdoors
 Natural Literacy – Reading nature
 Personal and Social development
 Grey space for 1:1/nurture
 Pupil led learning – intrinsic
motivation
 Awe and wonder
Parental Engagement
 Wider Achievements

• Wild Challenge
• Heritage Heroes
• John Muir Award
• Duke of Edinburgh
• Award Officers
Pupil entitlement – A residential
experience
#BrilliantResidentials

Work with national partners;

• Hostelling Scotland
• Field Studies Council
And;
• Big School Sleepouts
 Resources boxes

• Literacy Out of the Box

• Heritage Out of the Box
• Science Out of the Box
• ASN Out of the Box
• Orienteering
• Adventure
• Get into Nature – John Muir and Lost Words
 Professional Learning

• Comprehensive CPD programme for all staff

• Monthly networks
• Annual Teachers Dirty Weekend
• Annual Showcase Event – O’Factor
Green Gym and
TCV officers
 Strategic Support
School support including off-site visits, school
grounds development, safety and resources,
national engagement, corporate liaison, AALA
licencing ……
 Educational experiences

• Curriculum for Excellence

• GTCS Standards
• How Good is Our School
• Global Competency for an inclusive World
• Vision 2030
• Getting it Right for Every Child
 Future projects….
• HealthLINE –pilot project looking at using the
natural environment for the context for
Literacy and Health and Wellbeing work.
• The Outdoor Partnership (TOP) – Pathways to
develop grassroots adventure to employment
linked with participation to increase better
health.
“Education is not the
filling of a pail, but
the lighting of a
fire.”

Yeats