Learning outdoors guides

The Good School Playground Guide

"Highlights the possibilities and priorities when designing and improving school grounds for play and learning. Whatever your budget or scale of ambition, this guide will help you develop outdoor spaces which will help make your school the best place to grow up in."
Learning Through Landscapes

Outdoor Classrooms, Labs & Habitats

A thorough, detailed and compete guide to creating an outdoor classroom. ‘From the simplest outdoor seating structure to multi-faceted schoolyard habitats, gardens, restoration areas, outdoor labs, weather stations and more, there are endless possibilities to create (and keep creating!) outdoor settings that are functional for teachers and engaging for students.’
Bay Backpack (US)

Learning Away curriculum integration

‘Discover how Learning Away schools plan curriculum focused residential experiences from KS1 to GCSE.’ Sections: overview – benefits – getting started – progression – resource library.
Learning Away.

Schoolyard Design Guide

‘We hope these ideas will inspire creative schoolyard projects in communities across the globe! Each section highlights specific areas or elements that can be incorporated into a schoolyard renovation. Accompanying photos illustrate examples of these design concepts. The checklist at the end is a tool for reviewing final site plans.’
Boston Schoolyard Initiative (US), 2013 (pdf)

How to set up a food co-op or buying group in a school

“This simple “how to” factsheet advises schools on how to make fresh, local, ethically produced food more accessible to the local community, whilst supporting local farmers by providing them with a local, regular and reliable outlet. A school food co-op can also support other programmes such as Healthy Schools, Eco Schools and Food For Life.”
Sustain, 2011

Learning Outside the Classroom Manifesto

7 key pledges for supporting learning outside the classroom, plus some background into its benefits, purposes and methods.
DfES, 2006

A Child’s Garden of Standards

Written to link school gardens to California Education Standards. Examines the benefits & concepts of school gardens, & offers garden-based activities linked to academic study areas & grade levels, with contributions from schools successfully using this model, with plenty of content transferable to similar projects on the UK.
California Department of Education, 2002, on Green Schoolyard Network