Why? Teaching outside the classroom always breaks the usual rituals and makes teaching interesting and relevant to life.
When? Whenever you can imagine that the subject you are teaching has a very close connection to everyday practical life, even sometimes when you cannot imagine that there is a practical connection, look for it and you will be surprised how much everyday connection you will find.+
How? Just prepare your lesson in a very connective way for an outside environment, find cross-connections outside the classroom. You can also use this method to give students a self-directed task to find things outside the classroom that are related to the subject being taught, and later you can bring it back into the classroom and let them explain the reasons why they chose their items. Visit companies, shopping centres and any other place related to everyday life to teach your topic.
Any risks? There are no mistakes to be made in making connections to everyday life, it is very enjoyable for everyone to find these connections and the self-directed learning effect is also enormous. The only risk is that students get easily disrupted, so be aware of this and structure the field trips cleverly to allow space for disruption and to involve back to the theme leading methodologies.
