Outdoor instruciton of social science to year 4 primary school pupils

Pupils in Slovenia nowadays spend a lot of time in classrooms and other enclosed areas. In this master’s thesis, we examined lessons in outdoor settings that enable direct contact with nature and exercises in fresh air. These lessons have many positive effects as they provide real-world experience to pupils, increase their motivation, enthusiasm and confidence and consequently diminish problems with distractions, enable social development etc. (Skribe-Dimec, 2014). The purpose of this master’s thesis was to perform five outdoor school lessons, namely one lesson per week outside the classroom in the immediate vicinity of school regardless of the weather conditions and learning content. Our sample included pupils of a fourth grade in a nine-year primary school. We studied how the weather affected the conduct of the outdoor lessons and if all learning objectives were achieved. Theoretically, outdoor lessons comprise all sense organs, pupils become more active and the results of teaching practices in outdoor settings are better than in classrooms (Štemberger, 2012). We prepared a written test for pupils in order to determine the differences in knowledge of contents learned in classrooms and outside. Before (in February) and after (in April) the outdoor lessons, we carried out a sociometric test and searched for potential differences in pupils’ connectedness during the outdoor lessons. The results of the research show that weather affects the conduct of the outdoor lessons. Although the majority of pupils were disturbed by the rainy weather, some of them preferred the outdoor lessons to those in classrooms. We discovered that outdoor lessons can take place in bad weather if we prepare well. If the weather prevents us from having the entire lesson outside the classroom, we can conduct at least a part of it there (the introductory, main or conclusive part). Moreover, we established that outdoor lessons can take place regardless of the learning content and learning objectives can be achieved. We observed a difference in knowledge of contents learned in classrooms and outside. Pupils obtained better results at the written test of subjects learned outside. Furthermore, we noticed a difference in the results of the sociogram performed before and after the outdoor lessons. Contrary to our expectations, pupils were more connected with each other before the outdoor lessons (in February) than after (in April)