Field Trip, Flying Deer and 40+ Ag Boys
On Thursday, I had the opportunity to attend a field trip to Penn College. I attended this trip with the agriculture mechanics department. We took 44 boys on this adventure. Overall, this trip was great! Penn College did an incredible job of showing the programs they offer and bringing it industry and career representatives. This trip gave me a lot of ideas on how to organize field trips and also demonstrated that taking a large group of kids outside of school can be difficult and scary!
The trip had a bit of a rough start. I realized that even bus drivers make a difference. As a teacher, I believe having connections is essential. Getting to know the bus drivers and which are great to take along on trips can be a very important part of successfully getting the kids on time and to the correct location. For this trip we only took one bus and it was completely packed. We did have a few boys that we did have to force to sit three in a sit which was rough. If a sassy bus driver, over packed bus of a little rough around the edges ag boys was not enough we smoked a deer on the way. I have never heard bus windows fly down so fast and I was slightly concerned that the bus would roll over because every single one of the boys were hanging out of the bus window on one side to stare at the dead deer in the ditch. But luckily, we did have the ag mechanics teachers with us to check the bus over so we could continue on our way.
This field trip was also a direct hit on learning to be adaptive and flexible. We were originally thinking that this was an organized event. Meaning each chaperone and their group would start at one station and after a certain amount of time we would all rotate. We were so wrong! This even was actually a big free for all. This in a sense was great as students could go directly where their interests are. But, this would of been good to know in advance so we could of split groups up in a way all the kids with the same interests were together. Instead, we had kids with a huge variety of interests. I ended up asking my group their top stations that they would like to see so we made sure we made it to those stations. We also were only given one map and were not told some stations were outside! We tried to rotate between indoors and outdoors so we all did not freeze and some of the groups ended up doubling up so we did not get lost or lose any kids. Reflecting on the bus after with Mrs. W, we also stated if we knew how hectic and sprawled out the event, specifically lunch, was going to be. We would have gotten the students cell phone numbers or used an awesome app that showed locations and allowed messaging. This field trip was awesome practice as I am sure taking students on a trip my first time, when I do not know what to expect of the trip will be pretty nerve wracking!
The trip had a bit of a rough start. I realized that even bus drivers make a difference. As a teacher, I believe having connections is essential. Getting to know the bus drivers and which are great to take along on trips can be a very important part of successfully getting the kids on time and to the correct location. For this trip we only took one bus and it was completely packed. We did have a few boys that we did have to force to sit three in a sit which was rough. If a sassy bus driver, over packed bus of a little rough around the edges ag boys was not enough we smoked a deer on the way. I have never heard bus windows fly down so fast and I was slightly concerned that the bus would roll over because every single one of the boys were hanging out of the bus window on one side to stare at the dead deer in the ditch. But luckily, we did have the ag mechanics teachers with us to check the bus over so we could continue on our way.
This field trip was also a direct hit on learning to be adaptive and flexible. We were originally thinking that this was an organized event. Meaning each chaperone and their group would start at one station and after a certain amount of time we would all rotate. We were so wrong! This even was actually a big free for all. This in a sense was great as students could go directly where their interests are. But, this would of been good to know in advance so we could of split groups up in a way all the kids with the same interests were together. Instead, we had kids with a huge variety of interests. I ended up asking my group their top stations that they would like to see so we made sure we made it to those stations. We also were only given one map and were not told some stations were outside! We tried to rotate between indoors and outdoors so we all did not freeze and some of the groups ended up doubling up so we did not get lost or lose any kids. Reflecting on the bus after with Mrs. W, we also stated if we knew how hectic and sprawled out the event, specifically lunch, was going to be. We would have gotten the students cell phone numbers or used an awesome app that showed locations and allowed messaging. This field trip was awesome practice as I am sure taking students on a trip my first time, when I do not know what to expect of the trip will be pretty nerve wracking!
Brooke,
ReplyDeleteI am curious. Why only boys?
Field trips are learning activities that for value require structure of objectives/identification of desired learning outcome and assessment/accountability.
Here is a resources: http://plaza.ufl.edu/bmyers/images/Ag%20Field%20trips%203.doc