Naturalist expeditions are an important part of the school's educational project and curriculum. The Biology and Geology Department organizes about 12-15 nature-related trips each year to complement classroom learning. Careful preparation goes into each trip, including thorough descriptions and planned activities and observations aligned with students' grade levels. Students are provided field notebooks to guide observations and exercises during trips. Most trips require preparatory work in the classroom as well, and follow-up work is assigned afterwards. The school aims to take an interdisciplinary approach to environmental education through some joint trips combining nature, culture, and their interactions.

1. Naturalist expeditions learning potential
& integration into teaching

2. Learning Outdoors
 Our educational project strongly
encourages complementary activities.
 Many of them take place out of the school:
visits, trips, travels...

3. Learning Outdoors
 Organizing the whole scheme requires
every year a quite challenging effort.
 Coordination and communication are key
factors in order to make this outdoors
learning culture sustainable.
Departments
Extracurricular Activities Coordinator
Management Team

4. Naturalist Itineraries
 Biology and Geology Department plays, of
course, a main role in our outdoors
activities schedule.
 About 12-15 different nature-related trips
are carried out each year.
 They are scheduled in a way that tries to
match them with curricula development in
the classroom.

5. Naturalist Itineraries
 There is usually a thoroughly prepared
description of each itinerary, previously
available in the school’s website.
For instance:
Trip to Los Cahorros

6.  Each numbered stop is related to a set of
observations or activities previously defined
(for 12 years old students in this case):
“3rd Stop: Here we can explain
the concept of gallery forest.
Students will look for
botanicals characteristic
of wet areas (...)”

7. “4th Stop: We can compare this
area with the previous one (the canyon).
Here is more sunny and slopes
are covered with Mediterranean
thicket. We will explain
Mediterranean plants adaptations
to water scarcity. ”

8. Field notebook
 Students are often provided with a field notebook to
guide their observations and to propose exercises
and activities.

9. Information & Exersices in the field notebook
 Plants identification:
types, shapes, fringes
and disposition of leaves

10. Information & Exercises in the field notebook
 Who has been
here?
Squirrels, rats, mice and
woodpeckers gnaw
pinecones in different
ways.

11. Field and Classroom
 Most of the itineraries demand previous
work in the school.
Geological Itinerary through Sierra Elvira:
“It is recommended that students be
familiarized with basic concepts of
stratigraphy, structural geology and
paleontology prior to the excursion.
Likewise, it is convenient that you
have worked with geological cuts,
both for the recognition of structures
(faults, folds, discordances...) and for
the writing of geological histories.”

12. Field and Classroom
 There is always further work to be
done.
Geological Itinerary through
Sierra Elvira:
“As a final work, a report on the
excursion is requested, as
complete as possible, including
drawings, tables, texts,
reflections on the quarries..... You
can also make a model illustrating
the geology of this region.”

13. Interdisciplinary Itineraries
 We think it’s a good idea planning joint trips
with other departments, specially Social
Sciences, combining nature and culture and
their interaction.
 To us, environmental education is a priority
which demands an interdisciplinary
approach.