When I started teaching at KCA, I was blown away by all of the amazing recreational spaces that the school
has right outside it's doorstep.
Within 200m of the school's entrance, you can find forests, trails, playgrounds, soccer fields, a skatepark,a soccer dome, and a running track. Go just a little bit further, and you'll find yourself exploring mountain biking tracks, a duck/skating pond, a bird sanctuary, and a cross-country skiing trails.
Despite having never made outdoor education a part of my physical education curriculum, I felt compelled to build my capacity in that area in order to ensure that my student's PE experience at school was designed to help them live as many local adventures as possible.
Throughout this school year, I have allowed myself to adopt a beginner's mindset and just test things out when it comes to outdoor education (which I call Forest School PE at my school). My P-2 students have explored the woods behind our school, played Forest Archery, identified and named natural landmarks, built shelters, learned how to use a compass, gone geocaching, compared and contrasted different types of trees, gone birding down the trail, learned where to look for different insects, whittled sticks, and so, so much more.
There were a few observations that I made throughout these nature-based lessons:
First of all, students loved them. From complex lesson plans involving orienteering to simple ones consisting of finding a good stick to make a bow, students were highly engaged and participation levels were at 100% in each and every lesson. The only time that they whined or complained is when I would blow the duck call (I don't use a whistle unless it is for emergencies) to get them to line up at the end of class.
Second, even the most challenging behaviours that I had to deal with consistently in the gym disappeared when we went outside. I know that this is related to the engagement levels that I spoke of (good lesson planning is usually the best behaviour management strategy), but I still can't believe how different some kids became once you got them out into the woods.
Third, the need for complicated lesson setups, whacky rules, or crazy equipment to make lessons exciting becomes irrelevant when you leverage the wonder of natural spaces. Removing these factors out of the lesson planning equation gave our lessons room to breathe: we found ourselves with more time to be curious, ask questions, and embrace all of the wonderful "distractions" that come with teaching and learning in nature.
All this to say that I've drank the outdoor education Kool-Aid, and I don't think I'll ever be able to go back.So when my principal asked me if I had any ideas for a grade 3-5 full-day activity, I immediately wanted to bring some of the adventures I had been living with my P-2 classes to the older grades.
The plan for Wild Day was to organize a nature-based, field day-style event for the upper elementary students at KCA.
My goal was to design a day that would not only have students outside for its entirety, but also help those students develop new skills, experience new outdoor activities, and end the day feeling more connected to nature than they did at the start.
To achieve this, I knew that student independence needed to be baked into Wild Day's DNA. Students would need freedom to be able to explore, potentially get a little lost, and see our school grounds from a different perspective.
One thing that I still struggle to wrap my head around as a faculty member at KCA is how much bigger the school is compared to any other school I spent a significant amount of time teaching at.
My last two schools had under 200 students in them. At KCA, there's about 200 students in grades 3-5 alone.
Based on my experience with outdoor education in my teaching, I knew I could get away with slightly larger groups at each station. Also, I didn't want to over-plan the day as that would ultimately lead to students getting less out of each activity. The school day is rushed enough, I wanted Wild Day to run at a more natural pace.
The activities that I decided to move forward with were geocaching, birding, shelter building, and knot tying.
With only four activities planned, the schedule was pretty simple to make. We have eight homerooms in grades 3-5, with each homeroom having around 25 students in them, so classes got to double up for each activity.
8:00-8:30: Homeroom
8:40-9:40: Activity Block 1
9:40-9:55: Recess
10:00-11:00: Activity Block 2
11:00-12:00: Activity Block 3
12:00-1:00: Lunch
1:00-2:00: Activity Block 4
2:00-2:05: Homeroom
Yellow: Geocaching (Gathering Point: Basketball Courts by Library)
Green: Shelter Building (Gathering Point: Outdoor Classroom)
Red: Knot Tying (Gathering Point: North Soccer Fields)
Blue: Birding (Gathering Point: Skatepark Bleachers)
Our school site is huge, with lots of natural areas right outside the door. I shared the map you see above with the teachers so that they knew the general areas their students would be in. Again, students would be independent for most of the days. At some stations (e.g. geocaching and shelter building), they wouldn't be within sight of their teachers for most of the activity.
That's why each point had a gathering location where they would start and then meet back up at the end. I had a air horn to wrangle all of the geocachers up as that activity took place over the largest area.
Aside from knot tying, the activities I selected were based on the experience I had with my own students in PE. I was already familiar with the setup and knew what to plan for, which helped me feel confident enough that I could successfully scale these activities up to accommodate larger groups.
Earlier this year, my principal informed me that she had some leftover funds that needed to be spent by the PE department. I don't think that a class set of binoculars is what she expected me to go for, but we went for it anyway!
Kentville is a hotspot for birding that is situated on several migratory paths. There are a lot of birds that can be observed right along the Harvest Moon Trail (i.e. the rail-to-trails network that spans 120km through the Annapolis Valley), which just so happens to conveniently cut across our school grounds.
To complement our set of 30 pairs of binoculars, I made a mini birding field guide by modifying my Birding Bonanza Scavenger Hunt cards.
The field guide was made into brochure. The inside of the brochure featured different bird species that students would likely see on their walk. The outside of the brochure featured information on what to look for when birding, as well as details on two of my favourite birding apps: Merlin Bird ID and eBird.
The birding activity consisted of a walk up the Harvest Moon Trail as pairs of students looked for birds. Each pair had a set of binoculars and one of the birding field guide brochures I made.
Along the way, I shared as many bird facts as I could (which appeased my inner birding dorkiness) and showcased how Merlin Bird ID can identify birds by sound. I also took the opportunity to show students how to use the iNaturalist app to identify flowers, trees, and insects.
To wrap it up, we walked around the duck pond by the school to look for ducks, fish, and turtles.
Throughout the year, my students have made the woods behind our school their own. When you head into the forest, you can see the trails that have been created by all of the running, walking, and playing that they have done. Our woods are marked off with boundary trees, on which I tied neon flagging tape. For all of the time we've spent outdoors, I've never had a child go beyond the boundaries or get lost in the woods.
This is why I chose the woods for our shelter building activity. Homerooms met in our outdoor classroom (a gazebo-style shelter right on the tree line by the woods) and were instructed that they would have to build a shelter for a stuffed animal (we have a bin full of those in our equipment room).
The kicker was that the shelter needed to be as weather-proof as possible. At the end of the activity, teachers would go around an pour water on each shelter to see if it kept the animal stuffies dry.
As for materials, students were allowed to use any debris they found on the forest floor. In other words, they could not harm or damage any of the trees in the forest. Also, students were not allowed to take any materials from previously constructed shelters.
The students loved this activity and the teachers were impressed at how engaged the kids were. It was also cool to see the teachers be able to take a breather and just listen to their students having fun in the woods!
Having never done knot tying in class before, I wasn't sure how this activity was going to go.
The setup was simple: I created eight stations along the trail, each marked with PVC pipe that I banged into the ground. Originally, these stations were supposed to be on the soccer field, but I could tell that it was going to be a hot day so I decided to set them up under the oak trees along the trail.
Before moving to their first stations, each student was given a 12" length of rope. I cut the rope, burnt the ends, and marked each end with a piece of colour-coded tape. I happen to be terrible a knot tying (although I'm trying to learn!), and I know that even I get confused as to which end I'm looking at sometimes.
At each station, students would find a flip book designed to walk them through how to tie different knots. Although we had eight stations, we (i.e. myself and the awesome grade 3/4 teacher who helped with this station) chose to only explore four different "knots":
Choosing to only work on four knots meant that students would get two opportunities to practice each knot as they rotated through the stations. Again, no part of Wild Day was meant to make students feel rushed.
At the end of the rotations, students were invited to form a large circle in the middle of the soccer field. Once in formation, the teachers instructed the students that their final test would be to create a giant rope circle by tying each end of their rope to those of their neighbours. This turned out to be a lot of fun and a great way to end the activity!
Of the four activities that made up this year's Wild Day, the geocaching activity was the most demanding to set up.
Earlier this year, I decided to do a deep clean of the equipment room at KCA. The amount of equipment that we have at the school almost feels overwhelming. As I cleaned, I kept finding things that made me want to try new activities at the school.
One of the treasures I stumbled upon during this clean up was a set of eight "brand new" GPS devices. I'm using quotation marks here because – despite having never been taken out of their boxes – the GPS devices were from 2009.
I did my best to try to find out how to get maps and geocaches onto the devices, but had no luck in doing so. That said, the GPS devices could still connect to satellites and provide accurate coordinates.
So, I decided to create a geocaching/orienteering activity that would help students learn about geocaching, GPS coordinates, and cardinal directions.
After having way too much fun hiding eight caches on our school grounds while using the GPS devices to log each cache's coordinates, I got to work designing a geocaching booklet that students would use to find each cache.
The booklet consisted of 12 pages:
Each Cache Card was designed to help students apply orienteering skills to find the caches. The cards included the following features:
With the caches hidden and the booklets printed, this activity was ready to go! At the start of the activity, the teachers divided the students into eight groups. Each group was given a booklet, GPS devices, a compass (our trackers are old and don't have built-in compasses), and a pencil. The students were then given a quick rundown on how to find the caches using the information on their cache cards, as well as an overview of geocaching etiquette.
And then they were off. The students took off running as soon as the activity started, and kept running for the duration of the station. Teachers got to watch them pop in and out of the woods, cover the distances of the soccer fields, and crawl under signs, steps, and other features where caches might be hidden.
When putting the booklet together, I made sure to sequence the cache cards differently in each booklet so that groups didn't all end up at the same spot together. This, combined with the size of the playing area, kept the game fun and the caches elusive. By the end of the hour, the most successful groups had found 5-6 caches, which made them excited to share their discoveries with their classmates who had found different ones.
It was a lot of work to set up, but it was very much worth it!
At the end of the day, all 200+ students gathered in the middle of one of our soccer fields for a final debrief and some freezies. Despite having been outside all day in the hot sun, I didn't hear a single complaint from anyone.
"This was the best school day ever!"
"I thought geocaching would be my favourite, but I really liked birding!"
It was so nice seeing and hearing how much the students enjoyed being outside in nature, and knowing that the day went by without any major incidents. Best of all, the teachers loved the day and enjoyed getting to be outside with their students.
Since Wild Day, I've heard from parents who took their children geocaching here in Kentville. I've bumped into kids birding at the marsh with their family. I've been tagged in photos of families walking the woods to check out all of the shelters that were built there.
Hands down, Wild Day was the most fun I've had while running a "field day"-style event. By the end of the day, I felt recharged and excited to build on what we started here at KCA (as opposed to the absolute drain I've experienced after organizing other field days in the past).
I've already got big plans for next year, and I can't wait to help make Wild Day a meaningful tradition at KCA!
If you are thinking about planning a Wild Day-style activity for your school, here are some tips I would share based on my experience:
📍 Keep it local.
One of the best parts about Wild Day was how relevant it felt based on the location of our school. My goal is to help students see Kentville and it's recreational/natural spaces as their own personal playground. I believe this is best achieved by having students live positive, meaningful experiences in the same places where future adventures may take place.
Look at the area around your school. What recreational spaces exist there? How are people participating in recreational activities? How can you introduce those spaces and activities to your students through a variety of Wild Day stations?
💡 Teach to test.
As I mentioned, I had previously explored most Wild Day activities in my PE lessons with my students. Going through the planning process, deepening my content knowledge, and identifying the routines and procedures required to introduce these activities in fun and safe ways ultimately led to me having the confidence to pull Wild Day off successfully.
My teaching is greatest lab that I have access to. It allows me to test ideas, see what works, and generate new approaches in real-time. Sure, sometimes lessons come crashing down in flames and sparks... that's just part of the process. Looking at my teaching through a scientist lens keeps it fresh, fun, and ever-changing.
😮💨 Leave room to breathe.
When I teach in my gym, my lessons are jam-packed. I'm constantly adding builds, introducing new equipment, and switching things up to keep lessons on target and engaging.
When I teach outside, I don't feel the need to use that same approach. There is nothing on this planet that is more exciting, awe-inspiring, and engaging than nature, and I'm able to leverage my students' natural curiosity to plan lessons that are lighter, slower, and yet just as fun as any bells and whistles-based activities we would do inside.
If you are going to plan a Wild Day at your school, give your schedule room the breathe. Students need time to explore, wonder, and discover. When you create space by not overcrowding the schedule, you allow students to build those connections to nature that Wild Day is all about.
🚲 Bring a bike.
I like to think that I brought every ounce of creativity and innovation that I could to my Wild Day plans. That said, the ABSOLUTE BEST idea I had for the day was to bring my bike with me to school.
As you can see by the map, the Wild Day area was pretty huge. Had I needed to cover that distance over and over again on foot, I would have exhausted myself pretty quickly (especially in the heat we had that day). By bringing my bike, I was able to zoom around between stations to check on teachers, reset activities, and – most importantly – connect with students. I got to spend time sharing bird facts, telling them about some of my favourite caches, highlighted insects, trees, and fungi that can be found in our woods, and getting to see how much fun everyone was having. Plus, I got to sneak some runs in on the single track trails
I'm not sure why I've never thought of bringing a bike with me on field day before, but I'm considering it an essential practice moving forward.
So that's it for my Wild Day recap! I hope you got a few ideas out of this post and will consider running something similar at your school! If you have any questions, feel free to hit me up on Threads.
Thanks for reading and happy teaching!
