Education and School Field Trips

There is no doubt about it...school field trips are a great way to support education and learning as well as to have fun. In order for a school field trip to have optimal education effectiveness though, some planning needs to be completed prior to the field trip. Some education issues for teachers to consider when planning a field trip are: how will this field trip enhance an education standard we are working on in class, what education goal do I want the school field trip to accomplish and how will I measure whether students met the education goal for the school field trip?

School Field Trips and Education Learning

With the world of education being so focused on education standards, it is imperative that school field trips directly address how an education standard will be supported. In order to ensure this happens, teachers most often have to request permission to take a class on an school field trip. In this process, they must tie the purpose of the field trip to an education standard they are working on with students. For example, the class may be studying the earth and the changes it has gone through for millions of years. A school field trip to a planetarium or natural history museum would certainly support the students in understanding the topic more thoroughly.

School Field Trips and Education Goals

To take the example above a little deeper, the teacher could develop an education goal for the school field trip such as - students will learn the differences between the two groups of dinosaurs - lizard-hipped and bird-hipped. This goal is both objective and measurable and addresses an education standard. Schools of today are focusing on education standards and as such, must ensure all time spent is working toward students meeting education expectations. A school field trip that has goals aligned with state academic goals is an effective strategy for instruction.

School Field Trips and Education Assessment

No one in the field of education today will say that assessment is not important. In fact, many teachers feel assessment is leading teaching and in many ways this affects the direction of teaching and the quality of education. Conducting an assessment of learning following a school field trip is a fairly straight forward process. You look at the goal of the field trip and you develop a way to assess whether it was met. Using the example above about the two kinds of dinosaurs, some ways to do this assessment might be to have the students write a journal notation and review it to see if they learned the two types. They could also draw pictures of the two types or write a story about them. It doesn't really matter what kind of assessment strategy is used, the idea is to find out if students met the education goal set for the school field trip.

As mentioned earlier, school field trips serve a good instructional purpose if they are planned well and address education standards.

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