2020 Volume 102 Issue 1 Pages 77-82
To promote forest education in formal schooling, we studied the methodology to continuously reflect forest experience activities to in-class learning. This was done through forest learning units in an elementary school. We conducted surveys twice, once each in the fiscal years 2015 and 2016, for a fifth-grade unit that included forest experience activities. This unit consisted of five phases: 1) forest experience activities at the Fuji Iyashinomori Woodland Study Center, The University of Tokyo Forest; 2) a class using video learning tools to review the activities of the first phase; 3) advice about the children’s investigative learning from graduate students; 4) intermediate presentations of the children’s investigative learning; and 5) final presentations of their investigative learning. We then did co-occurrence network analysis and cluster analysis on words extracted by morphological analysis from sentences used by the children to describe what they had learned after phases 2) and 5). As a result, the validity to present the children with video learning tools for reviewing their forest experience activities through their five senses starting with smell and hearing was suggested.
