BEYOND the Classroom

For many students, the classroom is a safe, but artificial environment which traditionally caters to a narrow audience of learning styles and interests.

Before the classroom, learning historically took place in an intergenerational context where the older taught the younger in extended families and small communities very much in touch with the world around them.

Children can discover things about themselves and others as they experience things outside their conventional arena. This is the value of excursions and incursions. Teachers can capitalize on the multi-sensory exposure afforded by learning opportunities beyond the classroom walls...oppportunities that children may never otherwise enjoy and which they will never forget. Incursions and excursions that are well planned and prepared, "help students make sense of themselves and their surroundings"says Linda Lorenza (Beyond four walls : why go beyond the bounds of school? [online]. Teacher; n.198 p.22-25; January/February 2009).