Strategy+3+-+Field+Trips

Strategy 3 - Field Trips

Here are some ideas about how I might incorporate field trips into my math instruction: (/kis)
 * Create virtual field trips or projects by using a site (such as hgtv.com) and asking students to measure to make a project from the site.
 * Encourage students to go to work with a parent or neighbor for part of a day and prepare a report about how math was used in the workplace. To make this more effective, the teacher should have things a student should try to find while visiting. It might be interesting to compare (maybe through graphs or charts) how math is used throughout the Hutch/Buhler business community.
 * Allow students to learn through teaching. Ask our 4th grade students to provide measurement (or other math - related) learning for younger kids.

Carla: When I think back to my own elementary experience, some of my most powerful memories are of field trips. I regret that we are in a situation where we can't take our students to as many places for budgetary reasons; however, I love the idea of stretching the concept of "field trips" and trying some new things. I love Kris's idea of having our students provide a field trip experience for younger students. It would be fabulous if our students could create some sort of "math fair" or "science fair" for younger kids. Going to have to ponder that... :) I also know that there are so many sites out there that provide virtual field trip experiences - I've been looking at this one lately: [] Scholastic also has some virtual field trips - my class used one near Thanksgiving time about the first Americans and the Native Americans and Plymouth. There is also a site that I think might be linked to the National Forest Service that does virtual tours of National Parks. I'll look for that and try to post a link here. They both require registering, but they are free.

Jenn

I like the idea of providing a "field trip" experience at the beginning of the unit rather than the end; it reminds me of the concept of "experience before label" in Quantum. The virtual field trips do kind of intrigue me; I also wonder if we don't just need to "rename" some of our current activities as field trips. We could take field trips in the hallway, or we could ask students to do a field trip while they are at home. I'm not sure just how that might look, but I'm thinking it might be something like "take a field trip home and ask your parents how they use math at their jobs." I would love to try that at the beginning of next year, and then do a math bulletin board to really show kids where we apply math concepts. With each new concept maybe we could explore jobs. Sometimes it might be bringing a field trip to us with guest speakers and such.

Lynn I wanted to say something about guest speakers but couldn't find a category for that so I'm adding it here. And since field trips are a thing of the past, I guess we'll have to bring the speakers to the classroom.

Having real life experiences to associate the math they're learning makes the math real. My son came to talk about his duties as a marine. We discussed the vehicles he drives and works on and with that came all kinds of questions related to the math we've been learning. They wanted to know how fast the vehicles would go, how much it weighed, how many feet long and wide it was, how thick the glass was... You get the idea. Before instruction they would have asked what color it was :)