Outdoor Education

Outdoor Education at JIS

Over the past few years JIS has developed a strong outdoor education programme to compliment the learning that the students engage in within our school building. The main emphasis of the programme is to create an appreciation and empathy with our local environment and to create an understanding of the issues facing our planet and the role that we as people can take to make a positive difference. There are so many opportunities for students to learn in the natural environment, to ignore this would be a lost opportunity and detrimental to the education we wish to offer the students.

 

We believe there are many important benefits for learning when students actively enage in contact with their environment:

  • Providing regular opportunities to learn outside of the classroom, in the forests and beaches of Hong Kong will help foster a love for nature. This is vital for the future of everyone and our planet!
  • Whilst students engage with nature, they develop their social skills, physical dexterity, take appropriate risks and contribute to their mental well-being- very important after a year of limited peer interaction and time spent in front of screens for online learning.
  • Children’s curiosity with the natural world and unique way of knowing requires inquiry and exploratory learning, rather than a directional/top down, delivered approach. All children need the opportunity to play and explore.
  • Our children will foster a love of nature through familiarity with the forest, species and the sights and sounds outdoors. 
  • ‘The extent to which an individual believes s/he is a part of nature, their connectedness to nature, has been shown to be correlated with positive environmental attitudes’- Randy White
  • Learning outdoors develops creativity, problem-solving, independence, confidence and much, much more.

Our students have regular opportunities to take their learning outdoors, both within our school campus and also in the nearby country parks or beaches of Hong Kong. Our proximity to these outdoor opportunities has been a key art of development of the programmes we have planned. In school we have a range of staff with  Level 3 Forest School training  (U.K. based training certificates) who plan and support activities, alongside their colleagues for all students to take part in.  Through our transdisciplinary learning in our units of inquiry it is easy for us to transfer learning from indoors to outdoors to maximise the opportunities for creativity and impact. The children enjoy their outdoor  learning, are motivated by it and are keen for more.

Our outdoor education programme is also closely linked to the U.N. Global Goals for the planet. These goals are linked to lines of inquiry within our main programme of inquiry throughout the whole school.  We believe in making the students aware of both global and local significance of our environmental programme in order to inspire committment and significance well beyond their time with us at JIS.  

             

Our students do understand the importance of environmental education, however they also need personal experiences in the outdoors to connect to action! The positive drive to make a difference and do more is a key element of our programme and enables our students to feel empowered as learners.

           

 

Our outdoor education programme continues to develop alongside our school community and many of our parents and carers are keen to get involved and suport these activities, further role modelling its importance to the students at school. Thank you to everyone who has got involved. We look forward to working with you all even more in the future.

 

Our students do understand the importance of environmental education, however they also need personal experiences in the outdoors to connect to action!

  • Providing regular opportunities to learn outside of the classroom, in the forests and beaches in Hong Kong will help foster a love for nature. This is vital for the future of everyone and our planet!

  • Whilst students engage with nature, they develop their social skills, physical dexterity, take appropriate risks and contribute to their mental well-being- very important after a year of limited peer interaction and time spent in front of screens.

  • Children’s curiosity with the natural world and unique way of knowing requires discovery and exploratory learning, rather than a directional/top down approach. All children need the opportunity to play and explore.

  • Our children will foster a love of nature through familiarity with the forest 

  • ‘The extent to which an individual believes s/he is a part of nature, their connectedness to nature, has been shown to be correlated with positive environmental attitudes’- Randy White

  • Learning outdoors develops creativity, problem-solving, independence, confidence and much much more.

Japanese International School

4663 Tai Po Road , Tai Po Kau, Tai Po, Hong Kong

Information: 2834 3531 FAX: 2652 2166 EMAIL: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.