Portland Parks & Recreation: Field Trip Activity Guides for School Programming
The Portland Parks & Recreation Nature Activity Guides are a set of three double-sided, place-based activity sheets that we developed with Children & Family Programs at Portland Parks & Recreation for use with 2nd and 3rd grade students at Portland area Title I Schools. The goal for the project involved creating meaningful, fun, experiential activities that can be used sequentially or individually during any season, in a variety of outdoor settings including parks and school yards.
We started this complex project by facilitating a series of meetings with a group of staffers and community members from a variety of backgrounds, with the values of environmental justice, trauma informed care, and equity at the center of these sessions. During these meetings, we explored ways to make these activity sheets as flexible as possible to fit a wide variety of situations. These included possible COVID restrictions limiting travel, funding challenges restricting Field Trips to parks within walking distance, and activities held by park staff within the school grounds.
We also considered ways to make the activities as accessible as possible to a wide range of learners. The use of storytelling, sensory activities, and the icons to assist early readers were all features that ended up in the final designs.
The three sheets are color coded to facilitate quick and easy usage by Park Staff. The purple activity sheet focuses on Mapping and Exploring the Park space. The green activity sheet focuses on trees and their habitats. The blue sheet focuses on a small patch of land for closer investigation.
During the final stages of the process, Park staff tested out drafts of the designs with students to see how they worked in the field. We then used the feedback to further refine the products into what is shown here. Finally, after the English version was finished we worked with Portland Parks & Recreation’s Spanish translator to design Spanish-language version as well.