What makes a good field trip?

All you hear now days is students and teachers complaining because they can not take a really cool field trip. However, what the students do not realize is it takes a lot of prepratation and money for a field trip to happen. I just read an article by Brain Myers and Linda Jones from the University of Florida Extension titled "Effective Use of Field Trips in Educational Programming: A Three Stage Approach". This article goes into detail about what is needed to plan a great field trip.

Some good points were made about how field trips now days are becoming more sparce and are not even fun for the students. I believe that all field trips should be part of the instructional program and provide participants with first hand experience related to the topic being discussed.

Myers and Jones put how to plan a good field trip together. There are three steps, which are as followed.

1. Pre-Trip
1. Adminsitration
2. Instruction 
1. topic content 
2. vicarious exposure
2. Trip
1. Role of Participants
2. Role of Organizer
3. Post-Trip
1. Debrefing Activity
2. Culminating Activity

The administration aspect of planning is to arrange logistics including transportation, schedule and permission slips. Great it the teacher is going to help with this, I mean it is their trip, however the administrator needs to have the final say. 

The instruction content of the pre-trip should be to get the students excited. All field trips should have a purpose therefore pre-instruction is needed. This is the teachers chance to explain to the students what to expect on the trip and what the importance is.

During the trip students and teachers need to know what is expected of them. Teachers are to be there for a reference for the students and the instructors. Teachers should not run the trip but allow the control of her students to be put in the organizer of the facility.

The students during the trip should be on their best behavior as well as engaged in the information being presented to them. Field trips are to be for the better of the students. There are to be used to ehance the learning situtation presented to the students.

After the trip has ended there should be a debriefing session, even if only on the way home. Students should be able to answer the following questions: what was the importance of this trip, what did I learn that I could not learn in the classroom, and was it worth to drive here and not just have a guest speaker come to the school? After the debriefing sessions the teacher should somehow have an activity ready for the students to show what they learned. This is a great way for teachers to show the administration that the trips they take are worth it.

Hoepfully these few tips along with reading the articled will help any other teachers make field trips worth while.