Our 4th grade classroom thrives on social interactions, the students enjoy activities that involve moving around and working with each other. They discuss their ideas freely and love to bounce their thoughts off of each other. The classroom is always buzzing and rarely quiet. So, I was really surprised at the students' response to Friday's forest lesson.
We had read Another Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor earlier in the day, and the students wanted to experiment in the forest with quiet listening themselves. They wanted to test whether you really could listen to rocks and trees and sand.
All the students picked a spot, be it lying on a rock, sitting over the creek or up in a tree and they listened. I thought we'd be able to handle it for just a few seconds, but I was wrong. In fact, we were all surprised when it came time to come back to campus. The students listened so hard that one said she heard an ant walking across a leaf. Even I heard the gentle sound of a leaf drifting to the ground.
They noted in their field notebooks that:"I heard nature crawling and swooping around me."
"I heard the wind whispering to me."
"The highway sounds like a war has just started and one team is roaring. The trees are saying shhhhhhhhhhhhh to the roar. "
"The water is scared."
When we returned to the classroom we reflected on our afternoon.
"I thought that the experience was wonderful."
"It was so peaceful and quiet."
"I loved it, much quieter"
"Can we do it again?"
So this really led me to thinking. How could I incorporate this feeling of calmness into our day?
Did the students need this sense of calm more than I thought? I had so many questions on where to take this experience.
Could I create a classroom space that reflected the feeling of the forest - bringing that outside space in.
My ideas were full of spaces full of natural colors and materials, a sort of inside forest.
I happened upon Sara and told her about my experience. Sara told me that when this class had been in preschool they had much preferred to work outside than in. I wondered if I could try this again in 4th grade. Could we adapt our work so that sometimes during the week we could be outside?
It would be perfect for science as our focus is geology. I remembered a day a couple weeks ago (in an earlier post) when the students chose their work for our forest afternoon, many chose literacy and seemed very content working in shelters others had built. Math, outside? Well, yes I believe we could do that.
I started to think this could be something we could do. Would a mix of inside and outside be beneficial to my group? I am so lucky to be working in a school where this would not be considered unusual. That we are able as teachers to adapt our environment to fit the needs of the students.
So on Monday, we'll follow up with our Friday forest day and I'll ask the students what they think?
We may be needing our cozy coats and boots more often than we thought.
It would be perfect for science as our focus is geology. I remembered a day a couple weeks ago (in an earlier post) when the students chose their work for our forest afternoon, many chose literacy and seemed very content working in shelters others had built. Math, outside? Well, yes I believe we could do that.
I started to think this could be something we could do. Would a mix of inside and outside be beneficial to my group? I am so lucky to be working in a school where this would not be considered unusual. That we are able as teachers to adapt our environment to fit the needs of the students.
So on Monday, we'll follow up with our Friday forest day and I'll ask the students what they think?
We may be needing our cozy coats and boots more often than we thought.
Melanie, What a beautiful and provocative blog post. I love the idea of incorporating both more calm and more outside time into the 4th graders' day. Aneesa is a good person to consult about starting the day with yoga, this seems to center and calm her students. Kara is a good person to consult about teaching outside; she spent an entire year mostly outside with one of her preschool classes -- they even moved lots of materials outside and established a sort of outdoor classroom. Finally, you all might be interested in the space that the 7th graders are clearing at the back of campus in a wooded area. There are benches and a fire pit -- it isn't finished, but it has lots of potential as an outdoor classroom.
ReplyDeleteThe class that stayed outside every day from November to June was this class, when they were three. They didn't need many materials- but made seats, toys, coat hooks and everything they needed. On cold days they bundled up, and on warm days they played in the creek. Sara and Nancy learned a lot about the importance of place in schooling, and a lot about the way children of different temperaments respond to wild space. Another year, Kara and Page brought their class out many days as well.
ReplyDeleteWhat a challenge it would be to figure out how to do math and writing outside. It might be a bit like living on the ocean for a long time, right? Thanks for sharing this, Melanie
This is fantastic, Melanie! I can try to incorporate a guided meditation at the end of my lessons that focuses on finding a calming, peaceful spot in nature in order to encourage them to carry the peace of nature within them throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteYes, as Anna mentions, five of the kids in the current 4th grade were part of the Garden Room class that went outside every single day, all year long. One of the teachers' intentions that year was to explore the kinesthetic needs of 3- and 4-year-olds (the teachers were Sara, Nancy, and Sarah Ann). It was our family's first year at Sabot. I'm amazed and delighted to see their experiences from that year still reverberating six years later!
ReplyDeleteEager to hear/read about how this develops.