Take a walk around your school at the end of the day and note down how you could use the local physical environment in your subject teaching in the coming month. For instance, you might want the students to be able to go out and collect objects, or draw or make a plan of the school grounds or local area. In Science, you could look at the way plants adapt to their environment. In language teaching, you could look at the way advertisements use language to sell goods.

Select an area of the curriculum in which you think you could use the local environment and make a plan of how you will use it for one or two lessons at the most. Also think about what you want the students to learn and which aspect(s) of the environment would be best to use for this. Think also how you will evaluate the students’ learning.

What preparation do you need to do before you plan your lessons? You might have to identify what plants are found in the school grounds or maybe measure the buildings yourself so that you can guide the students if doing a scale plan.

Next, write your lesson plan so that you can see how long it will take and how to prepare the students. Think how you will manage taking them outside. Will you need to do it in small groups or go as a whole class? Will you need someone to help you? If so, who? What will the students do when they are outside? Do they need to record things and, if so, how will they do this? How will you use what they have done outside to assist their learning?

Next carry out the lesson and make a note of the plan and how well you thought it went.

When you have taught the lesson and evaluated it, find a colleague who has also done this activity. Share your experiences. Were all the students fully engaged? Did the lesson go to plan?

How would you do it differently next time? What would you do differently? Why? What did the students learn? How do you know this?