Nature Enhances Learning and play for Students of all abilities

Outdoor learning provides a rich and stimulating environment that can enhance learning experiences for all children. For students with special needs, it may actually remove barriers to learning and may improve self-regulation and social-emotional development. 

For children with special needs, time spent in natural settings can offer liberation from their challenges and an environment that helps them to think differently as they begin to craft new strategies for managing their disabilities. One study showed that when children regularly go outdoors into nature-rich environments at school their levels of self-esteem, focus, and participation in social settings improved (Ambrosini, 2014). 

Ambrosini’s study is supported by Lundgren (2004), who observed the benefits of a group gardening project experienced by a student who demonstrated hyperactive, impulsive behavior and challenges following directions. Participating in the gardening project enhanced the student’s ability to maintain a calm state, improved social interactions with peers, decreased anxiety, and increased self-esteem. These abilities were later transferred to other environments, and the student became an active gardener at home. 

The challenges of providing accessible outdoor classrooms are well worth the investment. When students with over-sensitive sensory systems receive calming input provided by nature, or stimulating input for under-sensitive sensory systems, they are able to regulate their social-emotional state so that their bodies are ready to learn.

For more information on the health benefits of nature and being outdoors see our chapter on Health Guidance and article about Nature Play Spaces.

Ensuring Access

Special education staff members can collaborate with the design team to help to shape new outdoor learning environments that ensure access for all students and account for everyone’s needs. The team can collaborate to analyze the existing conditions outdoors, look for ways to capitalize on existing assets, and help to create strategies to address potential barriers that may be unique to the site.

It is important to consider the following during the planning process:

Individualized education plans. Ensure students’ needs are met according to their individualized education plans (IEP). 

Support personnel and equipment. Remember to plan for enough space to accommodate students’ support personnel and potential medical equipment. Some students may be accompanied by a nurse or a paraprofessional during the academic day, including the time they spend outdoors. 

Assistive technology. Provide access to and care for students’ assistive technology. This includes any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities and can range from inexpensive and low-tech materials to high-tech, power-based devices that are quite expensive (Assistive Technology Industries Association, 2020; National Assistive Technology Act Technical Assistance and Training, 2020). 

Inclusive design. Use Universal Design for Learning principles to arrange, compose, and adapt outdoor learning spaces to meet students’ needs. Universal Design for Learning is “a set of principles for designing curriculum — goals, assessment, methods, and materials — in ways that provide every student with the challenges and supports they need for educational participation and achievement” (Zabala, 2020). Similarly, use landscape architecture-based universal design principles to ensure that the physical environment outdoors is accessible to everyone.

Engaging Parents and Caregivers

Parents and caregivers have experience with their child’s needs in multiple environments that school personnel are less familiar with, such as at home and in the community. With this experience, they can provide a wealth of knowledge to help inform the design, prepare outdoor learning spaces to best meet their child’s needs, and suggest strategies that will increase their child’s participation and success in a new environment.

If parents and caregivers spend time outdoors with their child, they may have encountered and reconciled potential challenges that could come up in an outdoor learning environment at school. They may already have any necessary equipment that they use when they take their child into the community, such as “travel chairs” with wheels that can accommodate natural surfaces, or specific items that they use at the beach and in parks, such as “recreational technology.” 

Note that significant changes in service delivery as a result of moving learning outside will need to be amended in the student’s individualized educational plan and understood and agreed to by parents and guardians.

Legal Considerations

Ensuring inclusion and access helps schools meet state and federal legal mandates for local school districts, including, but not limited to, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Emotional Regulation 

Communicate directions visually. Use visual schedules to provide expectations and directions for what to do in routines for entering and exiting the outdoor classroom. Highlight new sensory experiences the student may encounter in the outdoor classroom with natural items such as balancing on rocks, walking along a log (rough texture), or going near gardens and plants with new smells.

Use consistent calming routines. Encourage students to go through the steps of a calming sequence or routine in order to return to a calm state (e.g., close your eyes, take three deep breaths, squeeze your hands three times).

Help students self-regulate. Incorporate calming pathways in the design. Help students regulate by taking a path marked by signs of regulating practices, such as: walk the path, lie on your stomach in the grass or on a blanket or mat and read or draw, enter a pop-up tent for a cozy place to take a break, put on earbuds and listen to music, or go hug a tree.

Communication

Post visual schedules. Provide visual schedules for routines, events, and instructions. Schedules can be laminated or placed in plastic sleeves, in clear menu holders, or on the outside of a notebook to post or hold up. They can also be drawn up quickly and spontaneously on dry erase boards.

Computer-assisted communication. Some students use computer-based electronic vocabulary displays that incorporate symbols to facilitate communication. Graphics with corresponding arrays of these symbols are commonly available from each manufacture that produces speech-generating devices. Many of these graphics can be printed and used outdoors in different ways. See the Assistive Technology Industries Association for more information about technology-based supports.

Create low-tech communication boards. When a speech-generating device is not accessible, create low-tech communication boards. Boards can be fabricated with wood or PVC pipe and plexiglass, and displays (e.g., posters) can be laminated to make them waterproof. Most sophisticated language programs in a speech-generating device have a print option for displays. 

Install outdoor communication displays. Use permanent outdoor communication displays to support communication when students are running and playing without their computer based speech-generating devices on the playground. Susan Eason, a speech-language pathologist at Carleton School in Syracuse Ohio designed two all-weather communication vocabulary displays for outdoor engagement with peers. (See photos, right)

Use labels. Label the outdoor classroom with symbols and text to assist in vocabulary development and comprehension. Attach the labels to items in the environment or create signs on posts that can be anchored into the ground.

Add shelter to reduce glare on electronic devices. Ensure students have appropriate glare guards for computers, mobile devices, and speech generating devices. Help reduce glare by seating students in existing sources of shade or under shelters added to the school grounds to provide additional shade. (See Shade and Shelter for ideas.)

The photographs above and below illustrate some of the types of communication displays schools are using to facilitate interaction outdoors. The outdoor communication display shown above incorporates symbols from a core vocabulary program used with a specific speech device. The display below reflects specific “outdoor vocabulary” that is often needed in the schoolyard. Both of these displays were designed by Susan Eason. The Meigs County Board of Developmental Disabilities, in Ohio, supported the displays’ construction.

Visual and Fine Motor Abilities

Use natural materials as teaching tools. Write in the sand, dirt, or mud in the schoolyard. Create letters with natural materials, such as pebbles or blades of grass. Paint rocks with faces or use the natural features of rocks to discuss and identify emotions. Paint or write letters or numbers on rocks and then arrange the rocks to spell words and write equations. Use rocks for one-to-one number correspondence, or combine and separate groups of rocks to represent operations in story problems.

Adjust seating to optimize learning. Add a cushion to a log seat, or alter existing outdoor seating to optimize posture for learning. Some students might focus better if their feet are planted firmly on the ground. Others might benefit from being able to swing their feet freely. Consider seating alternatives for different learning experiences, such as storytelling, lecture-based teaching, writing, or hands-on learning. Adjust according to the needs of individual learners.

Create inclusive seating arrangements. For students who have greater access to a given activity while seated in a wheelchair, consider how to optimize inclusivity. Place straw bales or logs for seating near them or otherwise reflect the style of seating used by their peers.

Provide organizing systems. For students with organizational challenges, organize materials in marked bins or designated areas so they can complete tasks in sequence and take care of their materials.

Gross Motor Abilities

Support increased mobility. Ask students who have mobility challenges what they would most enjoy doing outdoors and use their ideas to support their increased mobility. For example, students at the school shown in the image to the right requested that the school provide hammocks in the playground, hung low to the ground so they could access them themselves, without help from their caregivers. They also selected wheelchairs that allow them to ride smoothly across the grass and the sand so they could access any part of the natural-surfaced playground.

In other cases, mobility may be improved by creating pathways that are smooth using permanent or temporary materials. Physical supports and grab bars can aid mobility and access. Consider how to mitigate or remove tripping hazards, such as stepping stones, gravel, or bark mulch, for students who use crutches or walkers or who are unstable on their feet. It is possible to purchase lightweight, portable, accessible pathway materials that can be rolled out or spread across sand, gravel, grass and other natural surfaces to improve access without complicated installation. All-terrain wheelchairs with special wheels for natural surfaces can also be useful for improving access in some situations and may also help improve the child’s overall experience by further expanding the range of potential natural locations that can be explored.

Adapt the physical environment to the user’s needs. Use existing school equipment for seating, work surfaces, and storage, or fabricate desks, easels, or lockers. Create standing desks as needed. Provide adaptive lockers or storage bins for independent or supported use throughout the school day. 

Install platforms and ramps. With moderate-cost or infrastructure investments, build a learning platform that can be used as a permanent structure or as a temporary structure that can be easily set up when needed. Incorporate a graded ramp that is accessible to power wheelchairs so that students can be positioned in the line of sight of teachers and instructional materials.

Nurture sensory needs to provide stimulation or calming effects. Create a sensory obstacle course away from the outdoor classroom to use when breaks are needed for vestibular and proprioceptive input. Incorporate a range of surfaces to navigate that require different motor sequences. If concrete, grass, or other natural surfaces cannot be tolerated, create a surface with the type of interlocking mat flooring used in gyms. This surface can provide a smooth, cleanable space.

Visual

Use textures to provide guidance. Mark particular areas with different textures. Materials such as cloth, plastic flowers, sand paper, and nature-based items can help students orient themselves to different locations. Use ropes with knot markers to guide students with visual impairments to learning areas (e.g., walk four knots and then my seat is to the right). Use ropes with texture markers to identify particular areas (e.g., cloth marks a cleanup area, soft silk flowers with leaves marks a garden area).

Adapt the environment to maximize vision. For students with partial visual fields, fabricate walls, signs, easels, and desk displays so that educational materials can be placed appropriately. Consider the changing position of the sun when planning seating for students with low vision. Use desk easels or full-standing easels to set up their work at variable angles, as needed. 

Consider placement of electronic equipment. Locate low-vision technology in a sheltered area. Purchase or build rolling workstations to house the technology. Cover and protect cables between long thin logs and with cable covers.

Mark terrain changes clearly. To support students with low vision who may be at risk for falling, identify changes in terrain with strong color contrast. For example, place colored duct tape on the edges of steps and spray nontoxic paint on about 4 to 6 inches of the beginning of a gravel path. 

Hearing

Position interpreters thoughtfully. Consider the needs of interpreters and the students they serve. Orient interpreters so they can hear the teacher and be visible to students.

Incorporate amplifiers and assistive listening devices, such as FM systems, into the learning areas. Provide voice amplifiers for students who have soft voices or limited intelligibility so they can be heard in the outdoor environment. Options for voice amplification include a boom microphone or a lapel pin that transmits to a wireless speaker. Position the microphone below the speaker's mouth so students can lip read. Orient students to ensure they are close and able to see the speaker's face for better speech comprehension. Incorporate assistive listening devices, such as wireless FM systems, into learning areas. Ensure students are placed within range of listening systems.

Ensure that sound-based alarms have visual components (e.g., flashing) that can reach outdoor spaces. Check with the facilities or maintenance department to install these if they are not yet outdoors.

Evaluate the background noise in natural settings. Some hearing aids have settings to reduce background sounds. Barriers such as trees between outdoor classrooms and playgrounds may assist in reducing background noise. Other sound absorbing materials such as fences or natural materials can help minimize noise. Outdoor classrooms that are near busy streets may have more background noise than spaces that are sheltered from traffic, behind the school building.

Consider slide material. Plastic slides can be an issue for children with cochlear implants (CIs). When children wearing CIs slide on plastic surfaces, static electricity builds up and can disrupt the functioning of their cochlear implants. Children may remove their CIs before using a plastic slide to prevent this. If resources allow, consider alternate slide materials, such as well-shaded metal slides.

Outdoor classrooms that are near busy streets may have more background noise than spaces that are sheltered from traffic sounds.