This week we had Kristen join us as a guest speaker. She spoke with us about ways we can integrate outdoor education within our classroom. One topic she covered very early in her presentation was “Place Based Learning”. She explained this to us as giving students the opportunity to learn about the nature around them. Local plants, animals even cultures. I really like this form of learning and personally had this all around me growing up. I very strongly remember in grade 4 my teacher signed up to have salmon fry in our classroom. We watched the salmon hatch from their eggs and grow into fry. Once they grew to the right size we went into Goldstream river and released them with a local indigenous chief. I remember him speaking about the importance of the salmon returning every year and how people can help their population with things like hatchery’s and even smaller things like our classroom tank. I found this to be a great learning experience even in my young age which proves how important brining our local nature into the classroom can be.

We did an activity outside and she showed us a couple online apps and sources we could use within the class like plant & rock identifiers. there was a super cool editing app she shared where you could add voice overs onto your photos. she explained you can take a photo of a plant or animal and have a voice over explaining what the photo was about. I also really liked the Minecraft example where she had a couple students make a Minecraft landform and present it to her. I found that to be a cool way to have kids do something they like doing.