viernes, 26 de octubre de 2012

Outdoor classes, useful classes?

Hello readers, I'm Carlos Benito Antequera and today I bring an idea that has been in my head quite for a while and that hasn't been treated since I started my university classes 3 and a half years ago. The idea that I have been thinking of, it's (as you can see in this post title) about outdoor classes. And why I bring this topic today? Well, this week we've been asked to read an article about Student-centered classrooms and one of the main point that was treated in it was the importance of create common situation and real world situations in class in order to help our students to relate their previous knowledge and skills to their daily life and allow them to see how useful are the concepts treated at school. Therefore I thought that outdoor classes are perfect real world situations, I mean, they are more real (if that is even possible) than classes done indoor, so the situations we can offer to our students are just as they will find once they are outside school. With that being said, I think that outdoor classes could be prefect to work subjects such as science and nature because, for example, instead of reading in a book how an ant is, we can go to the forest, find an ant and look it's characteristics and physiology. Moreover, outdoor classes can help nervous students to waste their energy by walking to the place in which we are planning to do the class and help them to be more calm while doing the lesson. Despite of that, I think that maybe some students can be distracted while doing the lesson and pay attention to the people walking in the street or the birds singing instead of listening to what the teacher is talking about. Therefore I suggest this question, are you for or against outdoor classes?

If a great amount of replies are sent to this post, through the course all of you and myself can treat this topic in deep. I'm anxious to know your opinion!

Have a nice day!


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2 comentarios:

  1. Unknown29 de octubre de 2012, 4:52

    Hi Carlos!!

    I found really interesting your idea to deal that theme because is a good point in education as it appears in the article that we’ve read in class (student-centered classroom) I want to explain the reasons for what I think that do outdoor classes is a good point in the education.

    In think that the best way for students to learn is putting their five senses, they need to touch, smell, taste… for that reason they have to be allow to experiment by their own to grow in their understandings enough to develop new understandings. In the outdoor classes students are directly involved so they become fully engaged in the process.

    The authentic experiences in relation with their real live (real world context) in which they can manipulate and do different things encourage them and of course it does that their motivation grows. As a teacher we have to be able prepare a variety of learning opportunities to meet the needs of the students, and construct their own meaning about issues and problems. So, the idea is be collaborative with the student, we have to work as a team because we are more effective as a teachers when we help our student to discover and to connect their knowledge.


    have a nice day!

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  2. Unknown3 de febrero de 2013, 16:40

    I couldn´t agree more with both of you. I also believe it is important to take our students out of the class and into the community. A simple trip to the market or the zoo can be so much fun and such a rich language experience. You may be interested in watching this little youtube clip of a morning I took my students to the Barcelona zoo. They loved it and talked about it in ENGLISH for weeks. :-)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3lV7Sa95D0 (you will need to copy and paste this url in your browser to see it.)


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