Teaching, Assessing, and Learning With Your Students Outdoors In All Weather: Come Inside?! We’re Too Busy Learning!, Black, Summer 2026

Course Description

Teachers working in outdoor programs, or who just want their students to spend more time outdoors, will be asked to prove actual learning. This course will highlight strategies for meeting assessment requirements for learning done outside school walls.

Covered: Linking outdoor activities to state curriculum standards and required assessments. Current research and evidence-based forest and nature-based education practices. Applying assessment requirements to outdoor education programs and adapting them to appropriately address skills and development in children of all ages, abilities, and identities.

The strategies discussed will address not just how to incorporate equity, access, and inclusion into outdoor education, but also how to account for them in assessing the learning that takes place there.

 Audience: PreK-3rd grade teachers and administrators

Instructor

Michelle Black, BA, Early Childhood Education, M.E., Elementary Education, M.A.E., Special Education.

Michelle Black, M.Ed., has over 30 years of experience teaching children from birth through elementary school, including early intervention and special education. She has spent a lifetime promoting outdoor learning in all weather. Michelle was the licensed preschool teacher at Wren’s Nest Forest Preschool in New Haven, VT, and is now an early childhood special educator for the Addison Central School District in Middlebury, VT. Michelle Black

Course Goals & Objectives

Course Goals:

• Understanding of practices and strategies for assessment at forest and nature-based education programs.
• Understanding of various assessment approaches and how to use this knowledge in standards-based learning in outdoor education settings.
• Understanding of ways to complete a 4-domain assessment outdoors.

Course Objectives:

• Demonstrate familiarity with current research and evidence-based forest and nature-based education practices.
• Identify and document skills shown outdoors.
• Demonstrate understanding of how to apply assessment requirements to outdoor education programs for which they were not originally designed.
• Demonstrate practical strategies for completing required assessments in an outdoor education program.
• Demonstrate understanding of adapting assessment requirements in an outdoor education setting to appropriately address skills and development in children of all ages and abilities, with attention to diversity of culture, class, and abilities of young children and their families.

Required Texts

Required Texts are not included in the course tuition.

Please purchase this book:

Sobel, D. (2020). The sky above and the mud below: Lessons from nature preschools and forest kindergartens. Redleaf Press.

The following articles (and others) will be provided by the instructor:

Barrable, A., S. Friedman, & Beloyianni, V. (2024). “Nature connection in adulthood: The role of childhood nature experiences.” People and Nature 6(4): 1571–80. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10657.

Cox, J. (2024, April 29). Learning where you live: The power of place-based education. TeachHub. https://www.teachhub.com/teaching-strategies/2024/04/learning-where-you-live-the-power-of-place-based-education.

Ernst, J., Sobel, D., & Neil, A. (2022, December). Executive function in early childhood: Harnessing the potential of nature-based practices to elevate and equalize outcomes. In Frontiers in Education 7: 01-15. Frontiers Media SA. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a53a29b90bade2a1ba1d0c1/t/63e118d1853a26513ec8adc8/1675696337602/Nature+Preschool+and+Executive+Function.pdf . doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1011912

Hanscom, J. (2024). Child born of the woods. https://www.childrenandnature.org/resources/fnn-child-born-of-the-woods/

Lombardi, J., & Simmons, L. (2025). Towards a more sustainable future: Addressing young children and the changing climate—Promising examples from around the world. https://globalchildren.georgetown.edu/publications/towards-a-more-sustainable-future-addressing-young-children-and-the-changing-climate-promising-examples-from-around-the-world

Wyver, S. (2024). “The influence of outdoor play on social and cognitive development.” Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development.  https://www.child-encyclopedia.com/outdoor-play/according-experts/influence-outdoor-play-social-and-cognitive-development

For additional course information

Michelle Black
802-377-2488

For additional registration information

Center for Schools Team

(802) 468-1325

Register Now!