FNR-71  1977 
the natural classroom
COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE, PURDUE UNIVERSITY, WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA
Ideas for Teaching Language Arts Outdoors
by Douglas M. Knudson Extension Forest Recreation Specialist
An outdoor laboratory or school forest can be very valuable for language arts teachers. Allowing students to express themselves about natural subjects stimulates and enriches their imaginations. There are many communications and literary skills which can be developed more fully in a natural environment than in the confines of a classroom.
Some of America’s greatest poets, novelists and commentators have had strong outdoor interests. The natural world, which changes from season to season, provides an infinite variety of subject matter. The current interest in the environment makes it advantageous for students to have an understanding of natural systems and their operations. The young student can develop an appreciation of words which describe the natural environment if he is given an opportunity to use those words in relation to something he can actually touch, feel, see and comprehend. Vocabulary skills and spelling become much more meaningful and attractive when attached to things experienced.
The following ideas can be used in a variety of language arts programs. The students may also have ideas for projects which can be related to your teaching objectives.
■ Record and then report on “newsworthy” items seen in the woods. An alert class may want to prepare a class newspaper containing nature news articles (beetles collide on walnut trunk, thousands of leaves fall before cold wind),
features, editorials, comic strips, weather reports, advice to the wood-lorn, recipes from nature, health tips from the forest (thin your blood with sassafras), birth reports, columns on forest politics, fanciful woodland advertisements, classified ads, and humor columns. This takes relatively little knowledge on the teacher’s part, requiring only assignments of duties. The local newspaper’s outdoor editor or local forester may be called in to help the reporters and columnists.
■	Development of descriptive vocabulary can be exciting if the objects or sensations being described are actually seen or felt. Ask the class in the woods to name five objects (log, leaf, creek, rock, moss), one at a time, without using the actual name. Then have them write descriptive adjectives suitable to the object. Next, you might try nouns and verbs which are similes to the objects. Try this in the classroom, without the direct contact, if you want to test the value of the trek to the woods.
■	A journal can be kept by each student on repeat visits to an assigned area. This area can be as small as one square meter. To start, the student records everything that is in the square meter. Then, on successive visits, he records changes which have occurred in its condition and presence. What are the effects of the seasons? Of different times of the day? Later, the journal notes can be condensed into a report.
Cooperative Extension Work in Agriculture and Home Economics, State of Indiana, Purdue University and U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperating, H. G. Diesslin. Director. West Lafayette Ind Issued in furtherance of the Acts of May 8 and June 30,1914. It is the policy of the Cooperative Extension Service of Purdue University that all persons shall have equal opportunity and access to its programs and facilities without regard to race, religion, color, sex or national origin.