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One of the discussions in the Singapore early education landscape in the past decade was about how educators can make play meaningful in order for children to gain important knowledge and skills through play. Through play, children make sense of their world and construct meaning in that play experience to expand their existing knowledge. In my personal experiences of teaching primary school students, I observed that not only do they want to play, they want to play outdoors where they can run, jump, climb and crawl. Play is joyful and can be made more meaningful when it is thoughtfully planned and crafted. Thus, in teaching English to young learners, I believe that it would be good to incorporate outdoor games which are fun and engaging to the learners, as well as achieve the purpose of helping them develop the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this essay, I will propose three outdoor activities that can be used to make teaching and learning English fun for young learners. The first outdoor activity is “I Spy” which I believe can develop their speaking and listening skills. By bringing young learners outdoors and playing a game of “I Spy” where they have to describe what they saw with three or more sentences, we are encouraging learners to speak in English. At the same time, we are developing the listening skills of the learners who have to listen to the description and identify the objects being described. This activity allows for target vocabulary to be taught and practised, as well as the simple present tense. The next outdoor activity is a combination of outdoor drawing and a show-and-tell segment thereafter. For this activity, young learners will be brought outdoors where they can draw something that catches their fancy. Young learners enjoy exploring and expressing themselves through drawing. After they have completed their artwork, the teacher can sit them under a tree and invite each learner to show their drawing and tell their classmates what they have drawn and why they chose to draw that particular object or scene. This activity allows learners to develop their speaking skills. The teacher can extend this activity to develop writing skills by asking the learners to write a few sentences about the picture they have drawn and display the pictures in a gallery walk inside the classroom. Another outdoor activity that makes learning English fun is a treasure hunt or “Amazing Race”. In this activity, learners will be required to read clue cards that would direct them to a specific checkpoint where they are expected to complete a task. Upon completion of the task, they will be given the next clue card to the next checkpoint and the next task. This activity coupled competition and anticipation - anticipation of what the next task and checkpoint would be, as well as the competitive nature of surpassing the other competitors. This activity develops reading skills which learners have to engage when they read the clue cards and comprehend its message in order to arrive at the correct checkpoint. Teaching English to young learners do not have to always take place indoors. Bringing young learners outdoors and engaging them in meaningful and intentionally designed activities would enthuse them about learning English, as well as increase their motivation in doing so. This will, hopefully, result in more fruitful teaching and learning sessions for the young learners.
