Learning outside the classroom for the promotion of Scientific and Innovative skills.

Learning outside the classroom helps children broaden their learning and helps to develop their knowledge and skills in a relevant environment. A relevant environment means children are able to learn through experiences of actually taking part in the chosen topic. Experience and doing are an important part of the Foundation Phase Documents (2008).

At University, we have studies learning outside the classroom in relation to the development of children’s scientific and creative skills. The link below to a podcast is based on this. As a group, together, we decided that Plantasia was where we wanted to research and visit to reflect on. Plantasia is a large hothouse open to the public and home to many different species of plants, animals and mini-beasts. Children are able to walk round and discover all the different species and find out everything about them from habitats, materials, food and life cycles.

Before going to Plantasia, as a group, we researched together what subjects they cover there and each took two subjects each and went away to further research so we would have more knowledge upon our visit. Angharad took habitats and materials, Natalie took weather and climate, and myself, I took plants and seed germination.

On our visit we shared our research of the different areas. Angharad and Natalie took their nieces and daughter so we could observe them taking part in some of the activities Plantasia offers and we could then gather a child’s perspective on what skills they felt they had learnt. As we got to view their perspective we were each then able to take away different skills that the girls felt they’d learnt as well as skills we felt they had learnt through our observations. We then discussed these and took away four each to research further with references before our next meeting. My chosen four were innovation, team, measuring and experimenting.

We each took it in turn to video record what we felt would be important in our podcast and so we were all able to be in shot and have a chance to use the camera, meaning everybody had equal participation.

After our visit we then met up to put our video together and record all our voiceovers to go on top of our footage. Together we decided which speaking part would fit best with what footage we had and we then developed our final running order and produced our final edited podcast.

It is important during group work to ensure you work together efficiently.

  Building skills of teamwork is important to continue as a life-long skill that you will need in the workplace. (Markkanen & Ponta, 2001)

 I believe that working with Angharad and Natalie as a team worked very well. We created a supportive working environment where everyone’s ideas were counted and valued, we discussed everything clearly in our meetings and everybody knew and understood what the main goal was.

I enjoyed working alongside the girls, sharing ideas and motivating one another to get the task done.

  Research has shown that using group and project-based activities are ways to effectively provide students with a more active approach to learning. (Harper & Hedberg, 2001)

References:

Foundation Phase Documents (2008) Physical Development. Welsh Assembly Government, Crown Copyright.

Markkanen, H., & Ponta, D. (2001). Web Tools for Collaborative Project Learning. In Montgomerie, C. &

Viteli, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of Ed-Media 2001: World Conference on Educational Multimedia and

Hypermedia, Norfolk, USA: AACE, 1236-1238.

Markkanen, H., & Ponta, D. (2001). Web Tools for Collaborative Project Learning. In Montgomerie, C. &

Viteli, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of Ed-Media 2001: World Conference on Educational Multimedia and

Hypermedia, Norfolk, USA: AACE, 1236-1238.

Picture Reference:

https://media.ents24network.com/image/000/024/387/8112921a579e3f59aeb92ad5a5ab88fe0264085b.jpg