Take literacy outdoors

A quiet classroom isn’t the only place to learn about verbs, adverbs and similes, says Steve Bowkett.

A quiet classroom isn’t the only place to learn about verbs, adverbs and similes, says Steve Bowkett. You can always step outside to run, laugh, dance and teach English…

Taking children outdoors as part of their learning experience brings many benefits. Apart from the ‘fresh air and exercise’ rationale, the outdoor environment offers a rich and diverse context for making meaningful links with many areas of the curriculum, not just literacy. The scope of this article precludes any detailed discussion of the topic, but I hope the following selection of games and activities will tempt you out of the classroom and encourage you to explore outdoor learning further.

1 Spelling Tig

Print off some A5 (or larger) letters on card. Laminate them to create a permanent resource. Ask the children to each attach a letter to themselves ready to play.

This is a simple chase-and-tig game that can feature one or more ‘chasers’. Before the game begins the chaser or chasers decide on a word (which they keep secret) and must then catch and tig, in the correct order, the children who have the letters of that word attached to themselves. The class can be split into two or more teams and you might set a time limit so that if the chasers fail to collect all of their letters, that team loses a point. If they succeed they gain a point.

A variation of the game is for one team (or the supervising adult) to shout out a word. The children with those letters have to ‘clump together’ before they are tigged by the chasers. If they succeed the chaser team loses a point, but if the chasers collect all the letters before this happens they win a point.

2 Wall games

The literacy focus here is on verbs / adverbs, similes and listening skills. The ‘walls’ are actually chalk lines drawn on the playground. There are a number of traditional wall games, but you and the children can easily invent variations.

For the basic game, draw two parallel lines across the middle of the playground about six feet apart (or more to make the game more of a challenge) and 20 or so feet long (or long enough for the children to stand with at least an armspan between them). This is the wall. One or two children stand between the lines and must not go beyond them – these are the ‘catchers’. An instructor stands outside the lines i.e. beyond the wall, while all the other children stand along one of the lines. Their task is to avoid being caught by the catchers as they try to cross to the other side.

• The instructor might shout ‘Run to the other side if your first name begins with B!’ So then Brian, Brigit, Bita etc. must run from one line to the next without being touched by a catcher. Those children who are touched are either out of the game or can become one of the catchers.
• Vary the game by using surnames or by giving the children numbers. The instructor might shout ‘Cross the wall if you are between six and ten!’ or ‘Cross the wall if you are in double figures!’ or ‘Take nine from thirteen and that number (i.e. four) must cross the wall!’ (As you see, there is plenty of scope for mental arithmetic here!)
• Give each child a coloured card (using lots of different colours). The instructor might then shout ‘Cross the wall if your card is – red!’ or ‘Cross the wall if your cards are blue or yellow!’
• Practise verbs, adverbs and similes. Help the instructor to tell the children how to move from one line to another. So ‘Jump across the wall, or tiptoe, giantstride, hop on one leg etc. Or cross silently, elegantly, spookily etc. Or cross like a cat, butterfly, shark, bat, elephant, chicken, bouncy ball, cloud, spinning coin etc.’
• Combine the game with ‘Simon Says’ (Simon being the instructor). So ‘Simon says giant stride across the wall’ (and the children do) or ‘Hop across the wall.’ In this case the children who cross are out of the game or must join the catchers.

Precaution: Make sure there is adequate space between the children as they cross, especially if arms are flailing, elbows are sticking out etc.

3 This is the way

The focus here is on vocabulary and sentence building. You will need to prepare a number of cards featuring verbs and / or nouns. Each card will have a single verb or noun written on it.

For this dance-mime game, children stand in a ring with one child in the centre with the pack of vocabulary cards at his / her feet. The children forming the ring must stand one arm span away from their neighbours.

The game begins by all the children in the ring joining hands (unless they prefer not to!) and singing:

‘Here we go round the mulberry bush
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush.
Here we go round the mulberry bush
On a cold and frosty morning!’

As they sing, they slowly circle clockwise, stopping as the verse ends. Then the child in the centre picks a card from the pack and holds it up and turns so that everyone else sees the word. The children in the ring must then try to think of a sentence that uses the word, and that begins with ‘This is the way…’ So if the word is ‘clothes’ acceptable sentences would be:This is the way we wash our clothes / This is the way we dry our clothes / This is the way we iron our clothes / This is the way we buy our clothes, etc.

Children who have thought of a sentence indicate they’d like to offer it. The child in the middle picks a classmate who tells everyone his / her sentence. So for example ‘This is the way we iron our clothes.’

Then all the children sing the sentence using the melody of ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’, meanwhile acting out ironing their clothes. Immediately afterwards the children sing another verse of ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ and circle clockwise as before. The game can proceed in several ways:

• Give the game a theme – ‘dragons’, ‘machines’, ‘animals’, ‘moving’ (hop, skip, jump etc).
• Prepare another set of cards with a sentence written on each (This is the way we fly in the sky / This is the way we eat ice cream / This is the way we tie our shoes etc). Split the children into two groups. The groups form two lines facing one another. One group is shown a sentence and has to mime it out while the other children must guess what it is (if you can persuade them to whistle ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ during the mime so much the better). Once the sentence is revealed all the children can sing / mime.