Colégio Dr. Luís Pereira da Costa is a school located at the center of Portugal, 10 km away from the Atlantic Ocean and is attended by about 500 students and 40 teachers. It started activity in academic year 1994/1995, is an establishment of Private and Cooperative Education with pedagogic autonomy granted by the Ministry of Education since the year 2000/2001. It has students from 10 to 18 years, teaching lower and upper secondary school. It also has tradition in VET courses in the Informatics, Multimedia and Sport areas. The school is characterized by motivated teachers, with a pedagogical practice centered in students. During the last several years the school has had a great development in the relationship between teachers and the surrounding community. Ιn order to enhance credibility and its training, ensuring the connection with the business and institutional organizations, the school has worked in partnership at local, regional, national and international projects (Comenius and LdV). We have a long history in ICT and Multimedia VET courses for high school students. The school belongs to a school group with a former strong pedagogical department responsible for organizational and comparative studies in the field of education. •Teachers Ana Carla Gomes andRui Miranda (the school’s director) are in charge of running the project. •Our school has a long tradition on camp visits, where students can learn about Portuguese literature and culture, geography, history, biology, geology and mathematics, among other subjects, such as: -Geokid, an activity that takes students for two days to some place in Portugal, linked to the nature, where sometimes students can camp. Coast Watch, an activity that takes students to the beach to observe the sea life and to clean the beach. -Visits to caves and to observe the dinosaur’s marks, to Biologic Parks, to monuments and Museums... Our students are highly motivated to work outside school and their behaviour is excelente. We have aplied a survey at the school about the interest in outdoor learning. The results of the survey showed that both students and teachers were highly motivated to
work in the open space and that they would like to have this kind of teaching more and more. •Our government has approved some measures to aplly on the education system as the «Referencial de Educação Ambiental para a Sustentabilidade» (Environmental Education Reference for Sustainability)
www.dge.mec.pt/sites/default/files/ECidadania/Educacao_Ambiental/documentos/referencial_ambiente.pdf), since young people don't spend much time outside doors, prefering to be indoor, playing games or watching TV. It's essential to lead them to ativities on open spaces, so they can associate learning to healthy life and respect for the environment. That's why this project is very important to accomplish some of the goals we want. That's through the application of outdoor learning that we could motivate students to learn STEM subjects..