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Lauren Weidman, Jenna Kartes, Kendyll French, Emily Monahan, Adam Eason

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Lauren Weidman, Jenna Kartes, Kendyll French, Emily Monahan, Adam Eason

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NY-6 Statistics and Probability 1b. Understand that statistics can be used to gain information about a population by examining a sample of the population; generalizations about a population from a sample are valid only if the sample is representative of that population.

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Using Aritifacts to support field trips 

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Using Aritifacts to support field trips 

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Advantages of replacing field trips with virtual field trips are that the student can control the pace of the presentation, the computer assignment can be made at an appropriate time, and after the prerequisite material has been studied Students can "visit" sites anywhere in the state (or globe!) without leaving home. This can help to overcome problems of rural isolation (Tuthill & Klemm, 2002).

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How to assess learning associated with field trips

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How to assess learning associated with field trips

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Learning should reflect the nature of the learner's experiences and examine whether or not learners have attained the learning goals and performance expectations set by the teacher. Embedded assessment strategies include providing for adequate pre-field trip briefings, checks on student understanding of purposes and expectations, formative checks during the experience and in post-field debriefings, as well as assessments of final products, performances or exhibitions (Tuthill & Klamm, 2003).

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Place-based learning is built around projects that use local geographical, historical, ecological, and cultural attributes of a community as meaningful starting points for learning.

Students are energized by the excitement and anticipation of leaving the school environment.

Students have the opportunity to see new things and learn about them in a more unstructured way.

Students will experience a more holistic, integrated picture of the information that, in the classroom, may have only been presented in a textual and abstract way.

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by Steve Berer, musexplore.net

If you are going on a field trip, it is important to prepare your students by developing their visual literacy, and by integrating the trip actively into your curriculum.

However, important as that is, it is not enough. The museum (and field trip) experience takes place in a very different environment from your classroom. That may seem obvious, but let's take a look at the differences, so that you can help your students maintain their focus to insure they have an engaging educational experience.
The Benefits of a Museum/Field Trip

1. Students are energized by the excitement and anticipation of leaving the school environment.

2. The transportation to and from the museum/site is often a pleasant open-social time.

3. Students have the opportunity to see new things and learn about them in a more unstructured way.

4. Students have the opportunity to determine what they learn and how they learn it. Said differently, student learning can be interest-driven, not teacher and curriculum driven.

5. Students will experience a more holistic, integrated picture of the information that, in the classroom, may have only been presented in a textual and abstract way.

6. Museums, and many other kinds of field trips are multi-media experiences; therefore, learning is enriched and reinforced with superimposing sensory and intellectual inputs.

7. Most museums are designed to stimulate curiosity and actively engage the visitor, so you have a very professional partner working with you to help your students learn.

8. In some museums you can arrange for your class to meet with a museum educator, often in a private classroom, to facilitate directed learning and/or provide a question-answer session.

Impediments to Learning on a Museum/Field Trip
Your classroom provides structure, limits, and authority to focus student attention and behavior. All of these are seriously diminished or entirely dispensed with on a field trip. Therefore, in spite of your high expectations, the museum trip may end up having little or no educational impact on your students.

1. Too often, for too many students, the trip becomes a texting opportunity, or a socializing event.

2. In open spaces and without close supervision, many students may simply not have the discipline or interest to pay attention to what they're seeing.

3. Moving through rooms and/or open spaces, students can get lost from the group. Suddenly everyone's attention is turned to finding the missing student(s) instead of being absorbed in the learning opportunity at hand.

Field trips take students into public spaces. Therefore, even if your students are disciplined and interested, the multi-media environment and the public bustle and noise will most likely be distracting. Also, if you're in an enclosed public space (like a museum, as opposed to a park or battlefield), you can't talk to your students as a whole group. Indeed, even in small groups, you will be limited in your ability to lecture or open a discussion. The multi-media environment and the public noise will definitely distract your students, and your discussions can disturb other visitors. These factor will deteriorate the quality of any kind of small group discussion you might try to have.

Besides the problem of public spaces, your field trip can take you to many different kinds of places. Each place has it's own narrative and pacing. Consider these four different kinds of museums: American history museum, Holocaust museum, aviation museum, and art museum. Each of these museums has a very different story to tell, and they will probably tell it in very different ways.

An art museum may arrange its collection thematically (impressionism, modernism, Renaissance, etc), but there's virtually no narrative connecting one object to another, or one room to another. How, then, will your students understand what they're seeing, or remember the art once they leave the museum?

An aviation museum may arrange its collection chronologically, at least to some extent, and that will help your students contextualize the information, but such museums are usually exceedingly popular. Your students may experience large, noisy crowds that will be highly distracting. You may find yourself spending most of your time making sure they don't get separated from the group, and looking for those who inevitably do get separated.

A Holocaust museum may arrange it's collection chronologically (that's good), and even if there are large crowds, you can expect them to be hushed and thoughtful (that's good too). However, the material is usually so emotionally charged and troubling that your students' emotions may well shut down their intellect. (Indeed, that's a common response, in my experience.)

Very likely they will emerge with intense emotions and a few strong visual memories, but no new understanding or insight into how and why it all happened.

You can expect an American history museum to be thematic and/or chronological in its presentation (that's good). The material, at least in part, will probably be familiar to your students (that's good too). Very likely it will not be emotionally overwhelming (third good thing). But here, students will incline to fall back on what they already know. A fact here or an image there may catch their eye, but how can you keep them from becoming bored and turning their experience into a clandestine texting game?

These are some of the problems you may face if you want your museum/field trip to be educationally meaningful. If you would like me to address solutions to these problems in future issues, please write to me, expressing your interest. If you have questions, I'd be glad to field them.

You can also let me know about a positive or negative experience you've had on a field trip. What did you learn from it, or how can we help you make it better the next time?
Closing Note
Ken Robinson, in his engaging TED talk, ' How to Escape Education's Death Valley ' says there are three principles that make human life thrive: "diversity, curiosity and creativity." Also from Robinson's TED talk: "If you sit kids down, hour after hour, doing low grade clerical work, don't be surprised if they start to fidget."
The Benefits Of Learning Through Field Trips

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The Benefits Of Learning Through Field Trips

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by Steve Berer, musexplore.net If you are going on a field trip, it is important to prepare your students by developing their visual literacy, and by integrating the trip actively into your curriculum. However, important as that is, it is not enough. The museum (and field trip) experience takes place in a very different environment from your classroom.

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Look at safety, educational value, and expense when deciding on a field trip

Make sure the location can accommodate your grade level and students with special needsCost- Will your students be able to afford it? Will the school be able to afford it?

Find and confirm transportation ahead of time. Make sure you have activities to keep children entertained throughout the potentially long bus ride

Send permission slips home at least a month in advance and find chaperones

Plant seeds of prior knowledge in class

Create a post-trip activity or assignment for students when you return

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In this post, I share helpful checklists for planning successful school field trips.

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Shows where you would be standing at each point in the journey

10 different stops

Real photos

Gives audio and video

Includes additional facts on the side of the page

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6th Grade

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Brief Description of the interactive activity that accompanies the field trip

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Brief Description of the interactive activity that accompanies the field trip

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Choose one decade. Look at the total number of immigrants that came from each continent during this ten-year period. Now determine the percentage of immigrants from each continent in this time period.

Using your answers from the project above, make a pie chart.

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After participating in the Ellis Island virtual field trip, students will demonstrate their understanding of statistics related to populations, such as immigrants, by participating in the virtual field trip and determining the percentage of immigrants from each continent in a ten year period from the data on the website and create a pie chart based on where immigrants came from to Ellis Island.

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Begins with going through Ellis Island through a virtual tour through 10 different stops. There are four different ways to interact with the tour including the story, pictures, video, and audio. Students can use these various ways cohesively to obtain the best experience possible. Through the use of each aspect of the tour students are gaining knowledge and statistics about the history of Ellis Island. Throughout the tour students get the opportunity to meet five different immigrants and learn about their story through videos and passages. Following the interactions with the immigrants, students can examine immigration data to understand the populations of people and where they have arrived from. Finally, students watch the actual video of the virtual field trip. Through the use of each dimension of the virtual field trip students are gaining knowledge about Ellis Island and the many statistics due to the arrival of immigrants.

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Cavin, A., Elfer, C., Roberts, S. (2014).  iGardening:Integrated Activities for Teaching
in the Common Core Era. Social Studies and the Young Learner 26 (4), pp. 5–9

Giardina, N. (2016). When Curriculum Meets Art. Educational Leadership, 74 (2), pp. 70-74

Klemm, B., Tuthill, G. (2003). Virtual field trips: Best practices. International Journal of Instructional Media, 29 (4).

Tuthill, G., Klemm, B. (2002).Virtual field trips: Alternatives to actual field trips. International Journal of Instructional Media, 30 (2).