In March 2020, like teachers the world over, we were given two days to switch from in-school teaching to virtual teaching in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was the outdoor learning teacher for 3, 4 and 5 year old students at the International School of Düsseldorf.
Over the next eight weeks, the preschool team of indoor learning and outdoor learning teachers collaborated to make videos for our students. We made over a hundred videos of ourselves reading books, singing songs, doing yoga, doing arts and crafts and demonstrating activities in both the indoor and outdoor learning environments.
Before virtual teaching and learning, we had no experience writing, acting, filming, producing or posting online educational videos. We learned as the weeks drug on and on. We yearned to stop making videos and return to the classroom to be with our students. But we plugged on because it was our only option. We were required to abide by German law and we wanted to keep our students, their families, our co-workers, our families safe and ourselves safe.
I offer a small sampling of my videos here. Not because the videos are good. They aren’t. Not because this represents my finest teaching. It doesn’t. I offer the videos as an example of how we tried to adapt to teaching outdoor learning virtually to preschool children. We were deeply dissatisfied with the paradox of our students sitting in front of a computer screen to watch outdoor learning videos. We felt deeply rewarded when families sent us photos or video clips of the children growing beans and flowers at home, go on a Spring color hunt or building a minibeast trap or hotel in their yard or garden.
So here’s the context:
Audience: 3, 4 and 5 year old children and their families
Purpose: To allow the children to see their teachers and school learning environment while providing them with fun, educational learning experiences they could try at home.
Challenges: Some children lived in apartments with no access to outdoor spaces or in homes with very small outdoor areas. During the stay-at-home order, public parks and outdoor places in the city were closed. Stores and nurseries were closed so supplies (seeds, dirt, pots, etc) couldn’t be purchased. Online orders took excessive lengths of time and many supplies were out-of-stock. As the teacher, I was sorely missing the immediate feedback I get from my students when we are learning in person.
Positives: All activities were “suggested activities”. To avoid stressing families, no pressure to submit proof of activity completion was exerted. We posted our videos to our classroom blog so parents could access them from a familiar location. Parents voluntarily emailed photos and short video clips of their children doing the activities. We happily responded to every email. Parents gave us feedback on the activities and experiences the children enjoyed or struggled with and we made adjustments accordingly. Older siblings often enjoyed doing the activities with their younger siblings. The children loved seeing their teachers in the videos. In this way, they felt connected to us.
Click on the links below to see a few of the videos we made for outdoor learning.
The challenge of making some videos was that I was often alone. Filming without a camera person often resulted in weird angles. There was no one present to remind me to look at the camera and not the iPad screen when recording. Propping up the iPad on the picnic table caused wobbly, shaky videos. There was no chance to film a second, third or tenth take when I called an animal an insect even though it clearly had more than six legs. I was very lucky to have kind, encouraging parents. Virtual learning was new territory that we all navigated together.
After looking for bugs, I showed the children how to make a trap to catch minibeasts.
Checking the Pitfall Minibeast Trap
Part 2: Checking the Minibeast Trap
Our children had been taught to use the secateurs and hand drills needed to make the second bug hotel. Be sure to teach the necessary safety rules and skills expecting children to use tools. Children should only use tools when supervised by an adult.
This video was made to answer a student’s questions about the caterpillars we were studying. I felt the students had seen enough of me so it was my attempt to make hearing information a bit more fun. Upon reflection, I should have used more pictures to illustrate what Wilamina was saying. I had just learned the “picture in a picture” function. It was my first video using my newly learned skill. The charm of an amateur video like this is that your students know you have a sock on your hand. They enjoyed that I was being silly and trying to entertain them while teaching them. The parents appreciated my effort, too.
Wilamina the Wise Worm: Our Caterpillars
Not every video we made was long. This brief video supplemented our lessons on life cycles with two real examples from our outdoor learning environment.
When the stay-at-home order was lifted, I made this video to encourage families to enjoy an outdoor activity together.
Two weeks before the summer holiday began, we returned to school. In the first week, half of the children came on one day and the other half came the next day. We still did virtual learning for the children who were at home while having children in school. The children were able to watch this video about pond life and then experience pond dipping at school.
The last week of school, all students returned to school with many restrictions, so virtual learning ended. We utilized our outdoor learning environment as much as possible-for playing/learning, for arts and crafts, for snacks and lunch- because it afforded the children with much more space to spread out and provided excellent air circulation while allowing the children to engage in active, healthy play. We were extremely grateful to spend two weeks in school with the children before the summer holidays.
