Field Trip Factory now offers content that supports each of our FREE field trips! To help you better prepare your students for an upcoming field trip, FTF has created suggested pre-trip classroom ideas and activities as well as post-trip activities to extend the learning after the trip.
Pre-trip activities:
- Activate prior knowledge by discussing what students already know.
- Build background knowledge with related reading material, vocabulary, and videos.
- Invite students to brainstorm questions they have and what they hope to get out of the trip.
- Get students excited about where they are going!
Post-trip activities:
- Provide discussion points about the trip, reinforcing the main ideas presented during the trip.
- Create a formative assessment to identify gaps in knowledge.
- Give more meaning to the trip and help students make connections to their learning.
- Spark student interest in the topic that could lead to participation in a community project or further research on their own.
Ideas and activities are tied specifically to each Field Trip Factory program, but the content can be easily integrated into your classroom lessons. Activities are differentiated for two grade levels. Students in preschool through grades 2 might read a book as a group to gain background knowledge, work with vocabulary that will be used during the field trip, or connect with the material they will learn on the trip by drawing a favorite healthy meal or exercise, for example.
Older students in grades 3 through 6 or 8 might develop questions to ask during the trip, write a journal entry about their experience, engage in a short research project, or create an advertisement to be displayed in the school. These are just some of the ideas. Students are also encouraged to write a thank-you note to the field trip leader. This allows students to practice letter writing, learn how to engage with others in the community and gets them thinking about what they learned during the field trip.
The day before the field trip is an ideal time to break out the pre-trip activities and go over the expectations for the trip. Field Trip Highlights documents are ideal for letting students know the topics they will discuss and the hands-on activities they’ll experience. All of these documents can be downloaded from the Field Trip Factory website under the Resources tab for each field trip program. Note that the post-trip activities for ComEd Energy field trips are only accessible after taking the field trip.
We are excited to offer this new resource to teachers and group leaders in order to enhance the hands-on content presented during each trip! Let us know how you like using the pre- and post-trip activities.