In partnership with the USDA Forest Service, EENM is excited to launch our very first Outdoor Learning Toolkit!
What is the Outdoor Learning Toolkit? This online resource is designed to increase teacher confidence in utilizing outdoor spaces, provide high-quality instruction aligned to standards and expand all students’ access to outdoor learning opportunities. The toolkit contains resources, lessons, activities, curriculum, guides and content that engage teachers and their students with the outdoors. It also has resources to support teacher professional development, classroom management, designing outdoor spaces, and simple tips and tricks to take the lessons outdoors–even if it is for the first time! We want this toolkit to be a place of gaining confidence in outdoor spaces right outside of the school site.
- Where is it? This toolkit is a free online resource that is located at outdoorlearningnm.org
- How to use it? This toolkit is a resource library of content that supports going outside, creating outdoor spaces, and providing relevant content that supports environmental and outdoor education for students.
When you visit the site, you can go directly to the Resource Library by clicking “browse the resources.” This will lead you to all the resources we have on the site so far.
To quickly find the resource you are looking for you can search by “Document Category,” by “Document Content” or simply by using the search bar to the right and typing in the subject/topic/grade level you are searching for.
As you scroll further down the main page you will see blog posts to read up on our partnership with the USDA Forest Service, a fun Nature Journaling Activity, and an article about the importance of going outside.
The Toolkit Will Continue to Grow and Get Better–But We Need Your Input!
This is just the beginning for this toolkit. Over this next month, we are strongly encouraging you all to take the time to browse the resources, use them, and communicate with us and others how you are using them and what might help us grow the resources or improve the delivery of them into the future!
- How to provide Feedback: At the bottom of each lesson or resource, you will see a place to provide feedback. This will inform us and others on the effectiveness of the lesson/content/etc. As well as a way to communicate how you used the lesson/activity/guide/ with others so they can use it at their site.
- Wondering how you can provide content to go into the toolkit in the future? During this month, we will be collecting your feedback and will be creating a form for everyone to use to provide us with the content they want to see included in this toolkit. For now, we are not accepting new content, but that will change on May 1st so stay tuned!!
We are excited to grow the possibilities of this toolkit this year with you all to have a resource that is accessible, easy to use, and gets everyone outside, having fun, and learning at the same time!
To learn more about our work and vision for outdoor and environmental learning, please visit our main website at eenm.org
To access the outdoor learning toolkit, please visit: outdoorlearningnm.org
This project was made possible with cooperation from the Southwestern Region of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Environmental Education of New Mexico.