FRÖDINGE SKOLA
ADDRESS: Skolgatan 20, Frödinge 598 95 Vimmerby Sweden
WEB SITE: http://www.vimmerby.se/barn-utbildning/grundskola/frodinge/

NATIONAL CENTRE FOR OUTDOOR EDUCATION
ADDRESS: NCU - Nationellt centrum för utomhuspedagogik Linköpings universitet SE-581 83 Linköping Sweden
WEB SITE: www.liu.se/ikk/ncu

AUTHOR: Rosa Cortés Hidalgo

Educational Level: PRIMARY

 

CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND EXPERIENCE

This experience has taken place in Sweden thanks to the Comenius European Commission Programme.

Defining Outdoor Education is a complex task. It is a broad term that embraces many educational trends which appeared at different times and in different cultural contexts. All the modern Outdoor Educational Trends have their ancestors in a range of programmes promoted in different countries, especially since the end of the 19th Century. Initiatives like organised camping, excursions, the Scouting movement, established in 1907 by Robert Baden-Powel in the US, or The Forest Schools came to form part of the Outdoor Education domain. The focus of all these approaches is placed upon the experiencing learning out of a formal classroom.

Forest schools were born in Sweden in 1950´s. Denmark adopted them and embedded their philosophy into its pre-school curriculum; småbørnspædagogik. They were soon adopted by the rest of the Scandinavian Countries, too. At the end of the 20th Century they moved to the US and, after that, to other countries such as Germany, France and the UK.

Nowadays, it is Sweden the country which leads in Europe the Outdoor Education Pedagogy. This type of pedagogy has gained even more relevance at present. It is studied at universities, especially by those students who wish to develop their careers in the educational fields. Pedagogues, teachers and Informal Education educators advocate for an education which makes man part of Nature.

This Scandinavian Pedagogy has among its main objectives to:

• Foster the integral children development by making them to be the constructers of their own knowledge experimenting in Nature.

To acquire this objective, it is compulsory to implement the teaching-learning process “outdoors”, therefore all agents involved in the educational process must be in permanent contact with Nature. In that sense, it is Nature the source from which, about which and in which children are to gain: knowledge, strategies to achieve it and social and independent skills. Topics are cross-curriculum. Personal and Social skills like building confidence, developing creativity or teamwork to solve problems are highly promoted through hands-on learning in a natural environment.

How do you work with outdoor teaching?

• To work and to play after the curriculum with Mathematics in your mother tongue Also, foreign languages, History, Geography and other school subjects on the right level for children.
• To use different kind of landscapes in all seasons and in all weather conditions.
• To use different kind of materials mostly from the place that you work in, for example: cones, trees, leaves, stones outdoor. It can also be good to have a few plastic cards, ropes, balls, scarves and so on. But do not always take the paper and pen with you out - -which you use indoors-, work more with the body and the senses outdoors.
• To see and work with the opportunities that Nature and other landscapes offer you.
• To work with safety to use other places than the classroom, and built up a lot of methods for different lessons/gatherings.

The Scandinavian curriculum states that our work as teachers should have awareness about what to do, how and where do it, so it’s good to answer these questions when you plan your work:

• What content do you have?
• Why this content?
• How do you work, what methods?
• What places are you working in?
• When are you working with this content?

Different kind of places to work in, for example:

• Your playground /schoolyard
• Your nearest forest or park
• History landscape
• Culture landscape
• The town/city landscape

What do children learn when working with Outdoor Education?

• To cooperate
• To concentrate
• To balance their emotions
• To have a better health
• To solve problems in other ways and find new solutions
• To take care of our environment
• To have fun in the learning process
• To foster their creativity and fantasy

EXPERIENCE

This experience has been a European cooperative meeting of teachers from different EU countries. These teachers taught from kindergarten to Secondary (Formal Secondary Education and Vocational). The tuition was hold by the Linköpings University National Centre for Outdoor Education, in Linköping, Sweden.

The common thread was the life and fictional literary work of the most famous Swedish writer; Astrid Lindgren. The theoretical frame started with the reading and analysis of three Astride Lindgren´s works: Pippi Långstru; Emil i Lönneberga and Ronja Rövardotter.

Next, it came the visit to Astrid Lindgren birthplace the small village of Näss in Vimerby, her school and the places where she used to play in when a kid.

Then, each teacher made up a weekly lesson plan rooted in a range of multidisciplinary subjects and levels using Astrid Lindgren´s work as the motivation component. Teachers came up with lesson plans based mainly on Math, Biology, P.E, Art, English and Music.

Eventually, we visited Frödinge Skola. This is a forest school. The school has two locations. One in Frödinge village which is located in a regular school building, and the other in the forest. Pre-school children (up to seven years old) and 1st cycle ones have all their lessons at “the building school”. However, they are in permanent relation with Nature as their playground has an area to cultivate plants.

Pupils of the second and third cycles are to have all their subject lessons at the forest school on Wednesdays, despite the weather. The forest school is surrounded by a wooden fence built by the very own pupils. The plot is divided into sections according to the different subjects. The purpose is to be self sufficient while working at times individually and at times in groups. Third grades in Math learnt about perimeters measuring trees with a rope; fourth grades rehearsed some parts of Astrid Lindgren´s Ronja; some fifth grades had English cooking lessons while preparing the school lunch using the Chanterelle mushrooms previously harvested in the forest, other group of fifth grades were repairing the school fence badly damage by the summer storms, whilst sixth grades learnt how to use moss to clean and cure injuries as Ronja did in Mrs Lindgre´s book.

After the morning lessons, the European teachers had the opportunity to put into practice some of the activities from the lesson plans previously created.

Lesson plan example:

1- Lesson based on Pippi Långstrump book

Subjects: English, P.E, Art and Math

Age: third grades

Main objectives: to speak and read in English, to develop their creativity, to implement different ways of moving, to gain spatial knowledge, to work cooperatively

Number of participants: the whole class divided into small groups of four or five students

Materials: mugs, elements from nature

Brief Description of the Lesson

a) Warm up: the teacher dressed up as Pippi starts stretching and asked the pupils to join her. Then she lies down on a mug with her feet on the cushion (stomach of a pupil) and asked the pupils to do the same. While pretending to sleep the teacher tells the children they are into a Pippi´s dream. In the dream Pippi is playing in the forest.

b) Main Part:

B. 1 Pupils are divided into small groups. Each group is given a sentence written in English related to Pippi´s world. The sentence was cut up in small pieces of folded paper. The groups can only open one piece of paper after they have done one of the tasks proposed by the teacher, for example: each group has to find five different leaves, a rock and two fruits. The members of the group cannot separate. In addition they cannot walk alone and therefore they have to agree on the way to move through the forest and how they are going to come back to the meeting point each time they find a new stuff.

Any time a group brings one thing it is allowed to unfold one piece of paper. The winner is the first group that gets the sentence right.

B. 2 On a circle. Each group will tell the rest of the class what they know about the leaves, rock, or fruit they have chosen: their symmetry, colour, tree where they come from

B. 3 Each group make and art composition on their mug with the elements they have picked up

C) Closure:

Finally each group explain their “masterpiece” to the rest of the class. The lesson wraps up singing a typical Swedish song first in Swedish then in English. It is a welcome tune, but as pupils have been motivated by making them “live” in Pippi´s world many things are done “nonsense” as the character does in her adventures.

Swedish Lyrics

Hej på (å -> pronounced o) dig, hur mår du?

Hej på dig, hur mår du?

Hej på dig, hur mår du, hur mår du idag?

Det är kul att se (Jörgen- Students Name) här! -> three times

Hur mår du idag? (student called starts again the song and name another student)

English Lyrics:

Hello to you, how are you?

Hello to you, how are you?

Hello to you, how are you, how are you today?

It is nice to see you (Jörgen - Students Name) here ! three times

How are you today? (student called starts again the song and name another student)

D) Evaluation: teacher’s evaluation is developed mainly by observation of the pupils independent and group work. Peer assessment is also taken into account as the different groups gave their opinions about the rest of the groups’ work (each group is given an assessment sheet to complete after seeing their partners performance).

CONCLUSION

Forest schools are conceived to have all the landscape that surrounds them as their premises, therefore, classrooms are not fixed places where pupils are most of the day sat motionless listening to what teachers are telling them with little or not interaction opportunities. On the other hand, forest schools promote an interactive teaching learning process, where teachers are the “architects” of the process and the pupils the “builders.” In other words, pupils learn the ropes while teachers guide them. The forest is used as a mean to build independence and self-esteem in children.

At Frödinge Skola the seats are the rocks, the ceiling is the sky and the forest is the blackboard.

The experience has been extremely enriching, especially for a teacher coming from Spain where this type of pedagogy is no familiar to our Educational System, still too much founded on the evaluation of the results and little on the progress and the process. Personally, I think theses ideas could help us to take on richer and more productive pedagogical approaches in the whole scope of the educational system and, subsequently, to address different learning styles to make the most of our students.

ANNEXES

Newspaper article from the teachers Comenius Outdoor Education Course 2011

Comenius Outdoor Education Course 2012

Pictures from the teachers´ experiences at the forest