I. General Information
School Name: Frank J Ney
School District: SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith
Inquiry Team Members: Terra Hooyberg: terra.hooyberg@sd68.bc.ca, Cathy Wicks: cwicks@sd68.bc.ca, Tahia Adams Wilson: Tahia.Adamswilson@sd68.bc.ca, Tanya Whiting: Tanya.Whting@sd68.bc.ca & Quinn Olson: Quinn.Olson@sd68.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: tzolob@sd68.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)
Curricular Areas Addressed:
Focus Addressed: Indigenous Focus (for example, Traditional Knowledge, oral history, reconciliation), Literacy, Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Land, Nature or Place-based learning, Self-regulation
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? By continuing with our previous inquiry from last year, we wondered, if our students would truly develop and grow an appreciation for, and a better understanding of, others, nature, and themselves.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: We noticed in our previous inquiry, that if students were given the time, space, and opportunity they need in our outdoor learning spaces, that their natural curiosity to explore, learn, and discover kicked in, which enabled them to further develop their creative and critical thinking skills. We also noticed that their ecological literacy, as well as an appreciation for nature, began to grow and blossom. However, we still saw significant gaps in our students’ social emotional and self-regulation skills. This lead us to realize that we still had work to do, especially on creating situations and specifically teaching these important life skills.
Focus:
“Nature will teach us many lessons if we take the time to visit her classroom.” ~ Donald L. Hicks.
“Let Nature be your teacher.” ~ William Wordsworth
As the first quote was one of our guiding factors last year, we also embraced the additional quote from William Wordsworth (stated above). With these two quotes firmly embedded into the culture of our outdoor learning times, we continued to assess if our regular scheduled Outdoor Education would have a noticeable effect on our students’ Social Emotional Learning (SEL). We knew that learning in our outdoor classrooms encourages and equips the students to: make choices, take risks, and learn from their experiences, as well as foster self-reliance and self-regulation. Specifically, we wanted to know if outdoor education would have a positive impact on their: self-management skills, their social skills, their relationship skills, and their responsible decision-making skills. We also hoped to see our students use and grow their problem-solving skills and their love and respect for nature.
Hunch: Our hunch was that by continuing to offer our students weekly scheduled outdoor learning experiences, that our students would grow their self-regulation skills in varying degrees. We know that Outdoor Education continues to be some of our students’ favourite time of the week, and by capitalizing on that we hoped to be able to foster and grow their self-regulation skills. Additionally, we believe that outdoor learning offers a unique environment that allows for some of our students to thrive in ways that a ‘traditional’ classroom does not. We also hoped that being in nature will in and of itself bring out some of the calming influences that our students need to help grow their self-regulation skills.
New Professional Learning: We learned, and are continuing to learn, about the value of using outdoor education as the vehicle to address/teach social-emotional and self-regulation skills to our students. Some of us continued to utilize the “Open Parachute Project”, a new opportunity made available by our school district. We also continued to work with our local Nanaimo Food Share and their School and Community Garden Programs. Additionally, we explored the idea of bringing ‘mindfulness’ books/cards such as: “Breathe Like a Bear” by Kira Willey, “Alphabreaths: the ABCs of Mindful Breathing” by Christopher Willard and Daniel Rechtschaffen, and “The Monkey Mind Meditation Deck” by Carolyn Kanjuro & Alexander Vidal, into our outdoor learning spaces and classrooms. Through the use of tools like these books and card decks, we were able to not only captivate our students, but more importantly we were able to teach them the valuable and regulating practices of calming and focusing our minds and breath. In addition, we also attended many virtual workshops offered by “Take Me Outside”.
Taking Action: This year our action was twofold, first and foremost, there was the actual invaluable, physical/hands-on teaching and learning that we did in our outdoor classroom spaces. Secondly, some of us also utilized our ‘traditional’ classrooms to further teach and make connections around our social-emotional learnings.
Continuing with our standard practice for outdoor learning, we embraced our ‘opening circle time’ and our ‘senses walk’, where the teacher would calmly encourage the students to listen, smell, feel, acknowledge, and be grateful for something that they noticed or sensed in nature. For example, the students might have been asked to do the “5-4-3-2-1” strategy where the students would be asked to notice 5 things, listen for 4 different sounds, to feel 3 different sensations, to smell 2 different scents, and think of 1 thing that they are grateful for. These small ‘noticings’ were often enough to help slow the students’ minds and focus on nature or the lesson that would follow.
Additionally, the use of ‘sit spots’ (a place where students sit quietly on their own and observe nature) or nature journaling continued to offer students quiet sustained reflective moments that further helped to ground themselves and enable them to better focus on the learnings and opportunities that followed. We continued, as always, to end our outdoor classroom learning with ‘circle’ time where we all come together and respectfully acknowledge the land and our First Nations ancestors, as well as what the students individually were grateful for in nature that day. This routine again reinforces that the students have to be ‘present’, mindful, reflective, and thankful, which are all the aspects we are trying to teach them as they continue to grow their self-regulation skills.
Realizing that the social and emotional learning of our students is vital in equipping our students for the skills that they will need to navigate the complexities of life, such as: building healthy relationships, developing self-awareness, managing their emotions, understanding others, and making responsible decisions. We also knew that we could not begin to fully realize our intended inquiry question unless we also gave more teaching and learning time to the students to achieve this. To that end, some of us continued to teach the S.E.L. skills during some of our classroom times using a variety of picture books and/or the Open Parachute online program, to further grow their understanding and skills around self-regulation and social responsibility.
Checking: To be able to summarize the differences we made would be impossible to document, because as with all learning it is the infinitesimal nuances and ‘small steps’ that we all take that make our learning visible, memorable, and hopefully impactful. Some of the measurable learning/differences we did make include:
- recognizing and adjusting our teaching to fit the outdoors – taking the time to model what is expected in our learning space and how to interact within it
- caring for our outdoor learning space and the forest animals that visit/live in it
- classifying/identifying & naming some native plants, insects, animals
- respecting, honouring and giving thanks to our Indigenous Peoples and Ancestors for allowing us to learn, play, explore, and grow on their traditional lands
- giving time and space to the students to engage and embrace the teachings from nature
- how to transfer our learning from one (outdoor) learning space to another
- how to better self-regulate our bodies and co-operate with our friends
- how to better express and communicate our needs in more appropriate ways
- the importance of being quiet in a space and allowing nature to share its secrets with us
Reflections/Advice: We think that all of our comments above demonstrate the heartfelt thanks and appreciation we had for this inquiry project and how it helped us to grow as teachers. Our inquiry has made some visible, and subtle changes within our students, our classrooms, and our teaching practices. We, as educators, have seen the value of dedicating specific blocks of time on a regular weekly basis to learn outside with nature as our guide and at times inside with other resources. We look forward to building on our students’ and our learning as we continue to incorporate outdoor education and all of its benefits into our personal teaching practices.
Our advice:
- Can be reflected in this simple quote from Leonardo da Vinci ~ “Nature is the source of all true knowledge..”
- Get out there and learn from and with nature – she is a patient and gracious teacher. Additionally, teaching outdoor education offers your students:
• experiential learning/hands on learning
• acquires vital social emotional skills & learning (such as: self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, critical thinking and problem-solving skills, negotiation skills)
• environmental stewardship/awareness
• deep connection, appreciation and a love of nature
• cultural awareness
• physical competency in fine and gross motor skills
and so much more!
“Restore balance. Most kids have technology, school and extracurricular activities covered. It’s time to add a pinch of adventure, a sprinkle of sunshine and a big handful of outdoor play.” ~ Penny Whitehouse
Thank you for this amazing opportunity, we are appreciative and grateful.