A little fresh air can get the blood flowing and your brain ready to learn. Dawn Alley’s 5th graders at Inman Elementary recently took their class outside of the box and outside of the classroom for a learning nature hike.

The class went on a 1-mile nature walk to explore the wooded land area that is adjacent to the school. “Hands-on experiences and exploration brought a morning of laughter and joy while also learning,” said Alley. “While learning can be done inside the building, it was exciting to see the students engaged and using the vocabulary related to the learning topics of plant and animal classification outside.”

Students gathered examples of vascular and non-vascular plant types to complete a hierarchy.

“Once we completed our walk, we returned to the classroom and students were excited and engaged in completing their own unique model to show their understanding of the content,” said Alley. “No two models were the same, but each showed understanding of the learning target!”