The Outdoor Classroom
EXPERIENTIAL OUTDOOR LEARNING IN FORT GREENE PARK
It’s time to act! We are putting into practice everything we’ve been learning these past years: environmental education, social emotional learning, experiential learning, outdoor education, cross-curricular learning, creativity, sustainability, mindfulness, community building … isn’t it all we’ve been talking about recently? Let’s transform the challenge of COVID-19 into an opportunity to bring progress and innovation to our education system and show the world these are more than simple buzzwords.
We know parents and teachers are struggling to keep the children learning and engaged in these times of COVID-19. Children, especially Elementary School kids, can keep learning their curricular content outdoors, in the park. It is in connection with Nature and real life, where Elementary School kids deserve (and thrive!) to learn the most essential skills and practices required at their age.
Let’s embrace the future of Elementary Education: more time outside, in connection with the real world and far from the devices, learning through experiences in a cross-curricular manner.
During October and November, The School of Wonder is offering outdoor learning classes in Fort Greene Park, full of interdisciplinary content aligned with their curriculum needs. Our classes are experiential, and combine lesson moments with tours, explorations and discoveries in the park.
Parents and schools can sign up for their group: whether it is a learning pod or a small student group, the group has a maximum of 5 students and is predefined.
There is a variety of creativity workshops or classes available in the weekdays at affordable prices.
Each outdoor class lasts 2 hours. Our teachers are talented educators, designers and artists who have been Wonder Teachers and Magicians with us in previous programs.
Personalized learning reports are provided to parents and teachers, to be informed of their children’s learning progress. Our founder Marta Pascual Barea has more than 10 years of experience in student assessment and reporting.
We take safety seriously. Masks are mandatory during the whole experience and the learning tools are laminated and rigorously disinfected. Our program has insurance that covers every student participating.
We know how to convert lessons into fun and engaging adventures. We apply a special project-based learning approach: Adventure-based learning. These lessons teach ELA, Math, Sciences, Design, and Philosophy as the children share an experience and reflect about it.
It’s going to look like this:
> Links and resources:
Tips for Teachers and Schools trying Outdoor Learning
What is project-based Learning
Our friends from XQ just published a great article addressing this topic: What is project-based learning?
Project-based learning allows for teaching cross-curricular content, in an applied and interconnected manner. Most importantly, it gives children an immediate reason to learn, as it appears as necessary step in the process towards the final objective.
What is Adventure-Based Learning
Adventure-based learning allows children to learn along the journey. Here, in School of Wonder, this is the name we’ve given to the unique methodology that we follow in the making of our magical wonder adventures.
Kids are given a mission (normally “a very important mission for humanity”) , and in this context, they face diverse challenges and puzzles that require learning complex concepts and putting fundamental skills into practice, such as orientation, social negotiation, ingenuity and others. The learning happens in the making... and it’s invisible to their eyes while they are grasping it. Only later, when they reflect on their shared experience, do they understand what they’ve learnt and consolidate it. Read more about the steps of adventure-based learning here.
Exploring the hard entrepreneurial life - lemonade edition.
The hard entrepreneurial life - children made cookies, cards and soap to sell.