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Outdoor English Learning Activity Ideas
Outdoor English Learning Activity Ideas
1. Sound and word throw. Draw a series of circles in the playground and label each of them with a
different sound. Shout out a word and ask the pupil to throw a bean bag (or something else you can
throw) into the circle that represents the sound that word begins or ends with. (True Aim Education).
2. Grab a letter load. Lay the alphabet out in the playground with physical counters and give the
pupil a basket. Shout a word out and challenge them to run to each of the letters that make up the
word. Who can collect all the letters and spell out the word the fastest? (Growing Book By Book)
3. Take story writing outside. Give the class a story prompt related to nature and sit outside to write
it. The world around them should provide plenty of inspiration for stories to tell. You could even
storyboard it out in the playground first (See point 7). (Busy Teachers)
4. Write phonics sounds on ping pong balls and throw them into a water table. Ask the class to go
“fishing” for sounds using a pond net. (Hope Education)
5. Make a series of garages with cardboard boxes and label each of them with
a phoneme. Give the pupil a toy car and then shout out a word. They then
need to drive the car into the correct garage, matching the word and sound it
begins with. (Thimble & Twig)
6. Word-based hopscotch. Use chalk to map out a course using words from the same family, e.g.
mat, sat, cat, bat etc. Ask pupils hop across the course, they read aloud each word. Use more
complicated vocabulary for more advanced children. (123HomeSchool4Me)
7. Use chalk to create an outdoor story map in the playground. Draw out 3-6 boxes and depict a
story that has a beginning, middle and end. Use the prompts to retell the story out loud before they
come to write it. (Hope Education)
8. Make recipe cards using outdoor materials. Cook up a leaf casserole or mud pie and write up a
list of instructions so everyone else knows how to make one too! (Thimble & Twig)
9. A new season is a great opportunity to learn new vocabulary. Print out a vocab list and come back
to it every so often, ticking off things they’ve seen that are related to that season. (Twinkl)
10. Stay silent and listen! Ask the class to go out into nature and carefully listen to the sounds
outside. Use the phonemes and graphemes collected and make some words. (Hope Education)
11. Head outside and read. The great outdoors can open up the reading
opportunities for children, enhancing their experience in a multi-sensory
environment. Create a dedicated space for it. (Pentagon Play)
12. Freeze various items in ice, then have the class melt and break into the ice to retrieve the items.
As they do, ask them to read out the sounds of that object, and pair them with similar sounding
items. (Growing Book By Book)