Experiential Learning in the Middle School Living Environment Classroom

Abstract

Experiential learning teaches students through concrete experiences, often occurring outdoors or outside of the classroom. (Scogin, Kruger, Jekkals, & Steinfeldt, 2017). Outdoor experiential learning provides higher level thinking opportunities as well as opportunities to build a range of non-cognitive skills such as cooperation, collaboration, independence and responsibility. Additionally, experiential learning is a key tool for creating interest in science and in connecting science contexts from the classroom to real world applications that students can experience firsthand (James & Williams, 2016). This project begins with a comprehensive literature review discussing different forms of experiential learning and benefits of this form of instruction as well as obstacles that have been found in the literature. Previous research is used to inform best practices of how to structure these types of learning experiences for use in the classroom. A template is provided for creating experiential learning lessons, followed by six completed experiential learning example lessons that use this template. A final summary provides a rationale that links the template and provided examples to best practices from the literature review. The template and example lessons act as a guide for any teacher who wishes to implement experiential learning in their own living environment classroom.