Outdoor Learning Maths


How important are outdoor activities in children’s learning of mathematics ? This is a question that has raised much debate and division of opinion over the years.


“Children develop mathematical sense by trying things out and playing with ideas. The outdoor environment is the ideal arena for planning maths activities that would otherwise be impractical, unattractive or impossible indoors.” (Sargent, 2015, p.5)
Coming from a background where everything we learnt about mathematics was practically all done in classrooms would make Sargent’s idea somewhat exaggerated - impractical and unattractive perhaps, but impossible is arguable. He does however make an important point in defining the outdoor environment as the ‘ideal arena’ but I would argue in certain circumstances.

In her review of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England, Dame Tickell (2011) made reference to the vital importance of the first years of a child’s learning and identified three characteristics of effective learning:
1)    Playing and exploring;
2)    Active learning and creating; and
3)    Critical thinking.

She also identified three principal areas for learning:
1)    Communication and language;
2)    Personal, social and emotional development; and
3)    Physical development.

As we can see there is a strong emphasis on the physical aspect of things, trying to find a balance.

Position and movement are essential to the mathematics curriculum in all key stages. Here children must learn how to use a grid, plot coordinates and follow compass directions, as well as the practical applications of understanding right angles. Not all children are able to understand these mathematical concepts unless and until they can apply them in real life. This is an overwhelming reason why going outdoors is such an important activity. The ability to get hands-on experience generally tends to be much more memorable than any indoor lessons. There is a lot of truth in this as I cannot recall a single indoor lesson from my school years but have some very fond memories of outdoor activities that I participated in. These types of lessons are become even more valuable for those children who are usually distracted or disengaged in lessons and even those who believe they have no interest in the subject. They can easily avoid doing anything indoors but will struggle to avoid participation in outdoor activities. The extra space afforded by the outdoors is also very helpful when teaching about the larger scale elements of position and movement. Having larger areas to explore are also very beneficial when learning the uses of compass directions. It is very helpful for the teacher and for the children to get a better sense of scale in the outdoors and to facilitate build position and movement into problem-solving activities. As an example, Holy Trinity School in Guildford hosts an annual event designed to get the children working together in a position exercise where they need to decipher clues. This type of activity really gets the children immersed in the exercise and provides them with a fun competition whilst they are learning.

If we look at what Plymouth University’s experiences on the outdoors:
“Most schools taught maths outside, there was an understanding that outdoor learning was useful for ‘making abstract concepts real’. ‘I see pupils learning things sometimes that they don’t perhaps make sense of quite so quickly indoors ... This morning with the numeracy, I know a lot of children would have really struggled with grasping the concept of perimeters, but being able to walk it out ... made a lot more sense to them’ (Teacher).” (Plymouth University, 2016)
This view was supported by Pratt, (2017) who list a series of benefits of outdoor learning:

•       Outdoor stimulation may support learning;
•       It can provide opportunities to find mathematical solutions;
•       It can give a different perspective to the mathematics being explored
•       Engaging in everyday situations could assist in developing a greater mathematical disposition;
•       It can provide opportunities to find mathematical;  and
•       It can show a different perspective to the mathematics being studied.
He did however point out that the outdoors can also be a distraction to students, just to emphasize that it is not a magical solution to learning but simply a method of enhancing it if used appropriately. Putting this into context in my own experience, I remember one of the few times that we undertook an activity outside our mathematics class. The teacher was trying to explain positioning, principally how to describe the position of one particular object relative to the other. He would place us in various positions in the playground and start asking different students to describe what their positioning was relative to some other particular student. It was a bit confusing at first but after a short while we got the hang of it and I distinctly remember that the less attentive students were actually getting involved and it seemed as though they were even enjoying it. At the time I obviously didn’t think anything of the exercise but now, thinking back I can appreciate the effectiveness of the technique which, having taken place so long ago, is still a memory I can recollect and relate to.
,
Whilst there are many writers that support the outdoor activity as important in developing numeracy and more broadly a child’s studies, the EYFS framework does not make any specific reference to outdoor activity. Section 1.8 of the framework makes it clear that a balance of play, adult-led activities and child-led activities must be implemented. It does however leave the balance to be struck by the practitioners using their experience and judgment. I suppose that it is difficult to give any kind of specific guidance on the matter given the fact that there are such varying circumstances like class ability, individual child needs etc and that any attempt to ‘standardise’ could be counter-productive. It would perhaps be a better solution to provide some kind of broad framework within which individual schools could allow their practitioners to operate in order to allow government to maintain some kind of control.







References

Assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/180919/DFE-00177-2011.pdf [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Assets.publishing.service.gov.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/596629/EYFS_STATUTORY_FRAMEWORK_2017.pdf [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Plymouth.ac.uk. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/uploads/production/document/path/7/7634/Transforming_Outdoor_Learning_in_Schools_SCN.pdf [Accessed 2 May 2019].

Pratt, N. (2017) Understanding Mathematics outside the classroom cited in Waite, S. (2017). Children learning outside the classroom : From birth to eleven. Second Edition. London: SAGE.

Sargent, M. (2015). Developing Early Maths Skills Outdoors. Salisbury: Practical Pre-school Books.

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