Back to School Shouldn’t Mean Back Indoors for Children
Sadly American childhood has largely moved indoors in the past 15 years and this NWF report, Time Out, recommends a number of approaches that schools and parents can take to increase outdoor time. Author Kevin Coyle, citing a number of case studies, makes clear that “outdoor time can improve overall health while lengthening attention spans, diminshing aggressiveness, improving test scores, and ultimately advancing learning.”
Project Learning Tree, AFF’s national environmental education program, has been helping educators make outdoor experiences part of their everyday lesson plans ever since the program began in 1976. Right from the start, the goal of the program has always been to encourage students to explore the world around them, their place within it, and their responsibility for it by learning outdoors as well as in the classroom.
Evaluation studies of PLT bolster the fact that environmental education creates more motivated and competent students. PLT has been shown to dramatically improve student performance, promote higher order thinking skills, and raise test scores. This article about Oil City Elementary Magnet School in Louisiana is one such example of how becoming a PLT-certified school boosted student achievement.
In addition to its curriculum materials for schools and youth organizations, PLT has adapted some of its activities for parents and families to use in the outdoors. Check them out at http://www.learnoutside.org/familyactivities.html
