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Every Student Learns Outside with PLT!
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| PLT's PreK-8 Activity #21, Adopt a Tree: Making bark rubbings of our adopted tree. |
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The best-selling book Last Child in the Woods by author and San Diego Union Tribune journalist Richard Louv presents evidence that American children are losing a vital aspect of healthy development as they spend increasingly less time riding bikes, climbing trees, fishing, or doing much of anything outdoors. Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder” and this got a national conservation started about children’s disconnect with the outdoors.
In response to the growing interest in encouraging children to get outside, PLT has launched a national initiative Every Student Learns Outside™ and website www.learnoutside.org to help educators make outdoor experiences part of their everyday lesson plans.
“For 30 years, Project Learning Tree has been taking kids outside to learn,” said Kathy McGlauflin, Director of Project Learning Tree and Senior Vice President of the American Forest Foundation.
“Through Every Student Learns Outside, we’ll accelerate our on-going efforts to provide educators with the tools, training, and resources they need to get their students outdoors and learning about their local environment.”
The average child 30 years ago spent four to five hours a day outdoors; today children spend most of that time indoors—largely because that’s where all the electrical sockets are. Some studies show that kids are plugged into electronics more than six hours a day.
Louv’s book claims that the absence of nature in the lives of today’s children is likely contributing to some of the most disturbing children’s health issues, including obesity, diabetes, and attention disorders. Louv argues that nature is not just a quaint form of leisure but a critical part of child development. Moreover, if children are detached from nature, how will they learn about, understand, and value nature. People only protect what they love so the danger becomes the fact that the next generation will not care about the land and be stewards of its resources. Bolstered by insights from parents, teachers, researchers, and others, Louv argues for a return to an awareness of and appreciation for the natural world. This approach lies at the very core of PLT’s curriculum goals.
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| PLT's PreK-8 Activity #3, Peppermint Beetle: Learning about the importance of humans' and animals' sense of smell as we search for the scent left by the "peppermint beetle." |
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Thirty years ago, PLT pioneered the concept of providing teachers with supplementary environmental education materials that can be integrated into lesson plans for all grades and subject areas. 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.
“PLT activities provide enjoyable and educational opportunities for educators and parents to help children connect with nature,” says McGlauflin. “Our emphasis is on giving children not just experiences outside, but also instructional time so they use that time productively.”
PLT’s multi-disciplinary curricula for Pre K-8 and secondary students teach core subjects through experiences in nature. For example, more than half the 96 activities in PLT’s newly revised PreK-8 Environmental Education Activity Guide take students outdoors. Skills developed through PLT activities, such as observing, comparing and contrasting, classifying and categorizing, and identifying attributes and components, form the building blocks for students to develop their awareness of and appreciation for the natural world.
Community action components of many activities involve efforts to make school grounds more green or enhance wildlife habitat. Through GreenWorks!, PLT’s service-learning initiative, PLT provides grants to educators who take their students outside where they can learn about their environment, and work to improve it.
At the secondary level, PLT challenges students to explore contemporary and pressing environmental issues. For example, PLT’s new secondary module Exploring Environmental Issues: Places We Live gets students outside exploring their own neighborhoods, investigating the environmental, social, and economic consequences of change in their community, and involved in local community action projects.
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| PLT's PreK-8 Activity #1, Shape of Things: Playing "I Spy" as we identify different shapes and colors found in nature. |
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In September, Project Learning Tree was invited to participate in a National Dialogue on Children and Nature to discuss ways to increase opportunities for connecting children with nature. Around 350 educators, developers, health professionals, and conservationists, including Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall, The Conservation Fund’s President Larry Selzer, and author Richard Louv convened in West Virginia to discuss the problems associated with “nature deficit disorder.”
“PLT encourages all students to become lifelong learners and well-balanced human beings,” said McGlauflin. “Our focus at the meeting was to present the role that PLT can play in connecting children with nature and highlight the value to students of integrating the outdoors and environmental education into the curriculum through PLT activities.”
For more information about how PLT can help your students learn from nature, visit www.learnoutside.org. Be sure to check back regularly—each month we’ll post a story about the impact PLT has had on educators and their students who use PLT in the outdoors. If you have a story to share, please let Vanessa Bullwinkle know by calling 202-463-2472 or sending an email vbullwinkle@plt.org.
Vanessa Bullwinkle (vbullwinkle@plt.org) is Director of Operations and Marketing for Project Learning Tree.
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