🚌 Thoughts About Field Trips

Some of my favorite trips and strategies for success

Everybody loves a field trip, right?

Well, maybe.

When I first started teaching, I remember stressing so much about field trips. It just felt like the big wide world was full of unpredictability, and I worried how my students (and I!) would handle it.

Since then, I’ve learned how to manage field trips, so I actually find them fun.

But before we dive into the strategies, let’s talk about reasons why we should do field trips. (We always have to understand the why before diving into the how, right?)

Here are some things that spring to mind for me.

1. Field trips help your students see that the things they’re learning have a larger context than your classroom. They can help you answer the question, “When am I going to need to know this?”

2. Field trips are good opportunities for your students to extend their good manners and discipline outside the walls of the school.

3. Field trips give a more well-rounded perspective of the subject at hand.

4. Field trips break up the monotony of the school year.

5. Field trips are memorable. (I don’t know about you, but most of my school memories are about field trips or projects.)

When I planned my year during the summer, I always tried to plan either a project or a field trip for every block (at least in 4th grade or above—the lower grades don’t need as much spark, and they even benefit from things being more routine).

And though it’s sometimes difficult to find a relevant trip for each block, I think it’s just fine to think outside the box and plan trips just for the sake of a trip, especially as you near the end of the school year and you’re really looking for a way to liven things up and celebrate. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Parks department outings. (Our local parks department has so many learning programs and I took my students on many of them, even if they weren’t connected with the curriculum.)

• Visiting a farm in third grade

• The third-grade igloo trip

• Children’s theater performances

• Symphony performances

• Hikes

• A surprise walking trip to the bowling alley (The students didn’t know where we were going, and it was SO fun.)

Anyway, the point is that there are so many great experiences out there and they’re all fair game, it just takes some effort to do the planning. So let’s talk about how to make it possible.