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| A day in nature offers lots of learning opportunities |
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| Visiting historic sites bring students back in time.Field studies provide a team of learners with a common experience to refer to, discuss, and build on. These field studies create community and extend the learning outside of the classroom. |
As I think about an upcoming field study this morning, I want to focus on what's most important.
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| Science exploration at museums. |
First, of course, is safety. It's important to bring along a class list, the cell phone, health supplies, and needed snacks, lunches, and drinks. It's also important to bring along the field trip payment and helpful chaperones. Sharing the trip agenda with all is important too so people know what to expect in terms of timely attendance at special events and the time to be back on the bus for a return home.
The upcoming trip gives students and their chaperones a fair amount of time to explore the learning place on their own--they can move from one exhibit to another with a focus on a number of overarching questions related to our main curriculum standards and teaching/learning efforts.
I believe that school budgets should better support field studies so that individual families don't have to pay every time a child goes on a field trip. This would be a good way to grow programs in meaningful ways.
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| A look at the future with a virtual trip to space. |
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Visiting signature local spots
and creating and learning there. |
A teacher needs to bring his/her best energy to a field trip as well as a serious attitude related to safety and learning and a sense of fun and exploration with regard to the special event that a field study is. The goal of field studies is to learn in a way that students can replicate in their own lives wth their families and on their own as they grow older. We want our field studies to inspire students to want to learn more and learn about exciting ways to learn in the field outside of school. I continue to be committed to growing our ability to embed field studies into the teaching/learning year in meaningful ways and will look for ways to grow and develop this endeavor as the years move forward. I welcome your ideas.
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| Learning about people and places via theater performances. |
