About Activities

The activities aim to embed outdoor learning, in a variety of forms, in curriculum-based learning experiences. All have elements of working outside and bringing the outdoors back into the classroom.  

The Key activities have been developed to be used in school and the local area. Further activities, accessed from each Designated landscapes’ page, take learners from their school and local area into the Designated landscapes of Wales. 

All the activities are cross-curricular in nature, involving multiple Areas of Learning and Experiences (AoLEs). They have been developed for learners working within Progression steps 3 and 4, and as such could be used as transition activities. Coverage charts for the activities detail opportunities for learners to access the relevant Statements of what matters (SoWMs) for these progression steps. However, learners could have opportunities to access other AoLEs and SoWMs, especially if elements of each activity are extended and/or used flexibly. 

The Coverage charts for each set of activities can be accessed from: 

• Key Activities
• Anglesey National Landscape 
• Bannau Brycheiniog National Park 
• Clwydian Range and Dee Valley National Landscape 
• Eryri National Park 
• Gower National Landscape 
• Llŷn National Landscape 
• Pembrokeshire Coast National Park 
• Wye Valley National Landscape

The Coverage chart for each activity can be found, along with the Teacher Notes, on the relevant activity page.  

All the activities focus on improving learners’ skills of problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creative thinking and research. They require learners to be metacognitive, take responsibility for their own learning and work well with others and have embedded cross-curricular skills of Literacy, Numeracy and Digital Competency. This approach allows learners to fulfil the four purposes of Curriculum for Wales. 

The activities aim to stimulate learners’ curiosity, so that they will be more engaged and therefore better motivated to succeed. They are based around questioning because this is the driving force behind improving learners’ higher-order thinking, with high quality questions leading to high quality talk. Whether it is the teacher or the learner who poses the questions, they should be open-ended wherever possible, and lead to discussion. Therefore, all the activities are designed around a series of tasks with focus questions for learners to lead them through the task.  

As effective collaboration is key to developing higher-order thinkers, the activities require pairs or small groups of learners to work together to discuss and answer the posed questions.  

The activities require internet access, preferably for pairs or small groups of learners. However, teachers could use Tirlun on a whiteboard as long as learners had opportunities for individual research and improving their digital competency where relevant. Also, each screen can be printed to a pdf for offline use or to paper for use outdoors.