Practical Tips for Teaching & Learning Outside in Winter
By Skylar Primm, Educator
The benefits of outdoor learning for student’s mental and physical health are well established and have received particularly strong attention since the COVID-19 pandemic, during which many schools established outdoor classrooms and encouraged teachers to take learning outside. Time spent in nature also helps build educator resilience, a topic that has been at the forefront of high-level discussions around the education field in recent years. Over the years, I’ve written a few pieces for The Art of Teaching on my experiences with outdoor learning and the positive impacts on my classes and myself:
All of this might sound nice and easy when the grass is green, the sun is shining, and there’s a nice breeze, but what about in the winter months? In Wisconsin, where I teach, at least a third of a typical school year is consumed by winter. (It’s a brisk -12˚F as I prepare this post for submission in January!) How can you take advantage of the benefits of learning in nature when the weather is less than ideal? It’s not as hard as it might seem.
Tips for Teaching Outside in the Winter
In the schools where I’ve taught, we’ve typically dedicated a full day each week to what we call field experiences (as opposed to field trips). These place-based journeys to off-site locations involve a great deal of logistics and planning on the part of the teaching staff, as well as preparation and scaffolding for students. In short, it takes a lot of work to spend the whole day learning outside.
Keep it Short
But one of my best memories of a field experience in recent years was on a frigid January day that was just above the cut-off for allowing students to be outside at all. Because of the dangerous weather, we needed to get creative with our planning. The goal was for students to learn about tracking and animal adaptations in winter, so we set them up with digital cameras, thermometers, and other sensors. We took them out on short, ten- or fifteen-minute forays into the field to look for signs of adaptation. We’d then spend time inside going over their data, speculating on what it might mean, and deciding what to look for next. We reaped the benefits of learning outside; the rhythm of exploring, processing, reflecting, and exploring some more functioned as a learning spiral; and everyone stayed warm.
Keep it Equitable
Speaking of staying warm, a common concern around cold weather and inclement weather in general is the lack of proper attire for students. This is an equity issue and should never become a barrier to students’ ability to participate in the curriculum, but the reality is that it can and does. I have had success reaching out to families for donations of used coats and boots — especially for younger students as children grow up — and keeping an eye on the lost and found at the end of the year. In Wisconsin, the Go Outside Fund is an option for classes looking for small grants to purchase classroom sets of winter gear, and I am sure that similar programs exist in other states. (Your local affiliate of the North American Association for Environmental Education can probably point you in the right direction.)
Keep Moving!
Lastly, it’s almost too simple to mention, but sometimes the simplest answer is the most easily overlooked. When the temperature drops, I always ensure that my plans for outdoor activities involve plenty of movement. Movement keeps blood flowing to your extremities, whereas standing still lets the cold set in. Don’t just ask students to sit around taking notes or reading a poem in the cold — unless you’re sitting around a campfire!
Lesson Ideas for Teaching Outside in the Winter
So, you’ve warmed up to the idea of bringing students outside in the winter. Now what? Here are a few ideas for what you can do with them once you’re out there. I hope these spark your interest and that you’ll start developing your own variations or original ideas in turn.
Birding in the Winter
Winter is actually an ideal time for birding, by sight or by ear. Fewer leaves on the trees make it much easier to see and hear them. Digital tools for bird identification abound (I like Merlin), but it can be much more fun and engaging to simply note observations on a birding hike and then work on identifications later when you’re back at school. What colors was the bird? How big was it? How many were there? What noises was it making? Can you emulate it? What was it doing? Whether or not you’re an experienced birder, checking eBird ahead of time will give you a very good idea of what species might be in the area right now so you can help your students narrow it down. My middle and high school students were delighted to learn about the birds in their area last winter.
Phenology in the Winter
Phenology, the study of seasonal changes in nature, can also be practiced in winter. A few years ago, I detailed a phenology lesson for McGraw Hill’s Empathy Changes Everything virtual care package (Cultivating Empathy for the Earth), but the basics are making close observations of a natural place. Winter might seem like a quiet time for seasonal changes, but if you look closely at tree branches you’ll see buds developing in anticipation of spring. The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point has published a Winter Tree ID guide for our state, and similar resources likely exist elsewhere. In making identifications, students learn how to use dichotomous keys and the virtue of close, detailed observations in the process.
Winter Survival Skills
For the most advanced and seasoned outdoor winter explorers, you can teach winter survival skills. What is the best type of shelter to build in a survival situation? Why? What are the best sources of food and water in a given situation, if you had to survive for several days or weeks alone? (Please keep your particular students in mind when discussing questions like these — stay developmentally appropriate and take care not to cross over into traumatic territory). School forests or other natural areas are a great setting for these investigations. If you have the ability and comfort to teach students fire building, there are countless lessons to be found in a fire: thermodynamics, weather, cooking, perseverance, and so on. You can find many literacy connections for this topic across grade levels, as well (e.g., Jack London, John Muir, Gary Paulsen, Jon Krakauer).
I hope that these have kindled a flame for you to consider ways you might take students outside this winter and in winters to come. They might be apprehensive at first — and you might be, too — but if you start small and keep expanding your collective Zone of Proximal Development, they’ll be begging to go out in no time.
Skylar L. Primm (he/him) is lead teacher at Koshkonong Trails School, a project- and place-based school in Cambridge, Wisconsin. In 2017, he was the recipient of a Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Fellowship in recognition of his teaching, leadership, and service, and in 2021 he was named the Wisconsin Association for Environmental Education’s Formal Educator of the Year. You can keep up with his work at skylarprimm.com and contact him at pbl.skylar@gmail.com.
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