Tower Rock ‘Outdoor Tuesdays’ let students explore Nature

By Angus Mossman   Behind me, illuminated in a glimmer of sunlight sifting through the hemlock canopy, five first graders have encircled a glorious white pine. Arms outstretched, faces pressed to the bark, they can barely reach each other around the old-growth giant. Between their bark-imprinted cheeks are silent smiles of amazement, wonder, happiness. To my left, Carter is sitting on the frozen stream, sorting a pile of rocks into metamorphic versus sedimentary. “This one’s a conglomerate! I guess it goes in the middle,” he calls out. Natalie and Dex are bear-crawling up a hill toward a glassy wall of icicles dripping off a sandstone overhang. A discarded orange mitten and bag of trail mix mark their path. Just ahead, Mia is bouncing on a fallen branch, chewing on the minty bark of a yellow birch twig. “I love hiking!” she exclaims. But stomachs are beginning to rumble, and so with a quiet ‘Howoooo’ our group of 12 joins back together and we head onward through the quiet, fresh snow towards the voices of our classmates who have already reached the meeting place. Soon, snow-covered branches give way to purple hats and bright blue coats, a few wafts of smoke. As we approach the group, Dylan comes in with a load of dead branches for the fire. Spongebob and princess backpacks hit the ground and lunches come out. Some kids join those already sitting around the small campfire to warm up and listen to stories. Others take their lunches over to the stream bank for some peace and quiet. Mrs. Sorg is leading a warm-up challenge and Mr. Edwards has begun a game of hide-and-seek among the big trees. Mrs. Hartman is zipping up jackets right and left. I look around. There are a few shivering kids who need to get moving, but mostly people are comfortable, having fun on a 20 degree day in the middle of the forest. I smile. We can do this. We’ve been doing this all year! Growling owls, a fleeing fox, tiny crab spiders and their own thoughts are just a few of the encounters first graders at Tower Rock Elementary School have stumbled upon during their weekly outdoor explorations over the past seven months. With the help of gracious community support and a team of creative educators, Tower Rock first graders have spent a day of every week outside since the beginning of the school year. The days have given students an opportunity to connect classroom ideas and vocabulary with real-world experiences, build background knowledge, and develop unique senses of place and belonging within the environment and class community. The idea came about last spring when I sat down with first-grade teacher JoAnnah Sorg to brainstorm how to involve students in a school-wide prairie planting. “Wouldn’t it be cool”, she mused “if we could spend one day each week totally outside!?” Five months and a few meetings later, Tuesday September 7th rolled around and there we were, 38 first graders and a handful of teachers seated in a circle on the grass explaining how the day, and all the upcoming Tuesdays would go. Now, 38 outdoor learning days later, the kids are used to the routine, and most come to school on Tuesday mornings particularly excited. As one parent shared, “Brooks is always the first one up on Tuesdays, making sure he has layers and good shoes so he’s ready for outdoor learning day.” Parents have been overwhelmingly supportive of the days, noting how their students’ observation skills and curiosity have grown through the year. The units of study and thematic teaching in first grade have contributed greatly to the success of outdoor days. Because the units of study correlate with our local environment and phenology, and because students dive in deep to each topic for several weeks, we’ve been able to focus each outdoor learning day on topics students are studying in the classroom in ways that build on and contribute to future classroom learning. In addition to academic skills like math and reading, the outdoor days also give students ample opportunities to build social-emotional skills. When asked about something she’d learned during outdoor learning days, Loriah shared “You get to face your fears. Sometimes it’s scary, but when you learn something from it, it’s not so scary after all.”