In this article, we will share a list of five reasons for taking field trips. We will also talk about the advantages of travelling abroad with your students and why do we need field trips.
List of five reasons for taking field trips
Here is our list of five reasons for taking field trips:
- To unite and mobilize around a school project: Spending several days outside of school, being in a community 24 hours a day, inevitably strengthens group cohesion within the class. A new dynamic is taking place.
Most of the time, the students are very motivated by this experience before, during and after the stay. So now is the time to involve them in the preparation of the project but also to have them work on a post-stay presentation. Travel can thus constitute the common thread of an entire year, around an educational project.
- To teach and learn differently: A field trip will be an opportunity to change the representations of school learning through direct contact with the natural environment. The discovery of sites or original works does not provide the same emotions as reproductions on paper or screen.
This gives meaning to the learning, which is sometimes abstract. School trips also make it possible to mobilize knowledge from different disciplines and make them complementary. Finally, for some students, it is the opportunity to better understand a concept that escaped them.
- To improve the student-teacher relationship: The school trip allows you to get to know the students better. In a more relaxed setting and outside the school walls, the real personalities are revealed.
It is a wonderful human experience that changes the relationships between pupils, between pupils and teachers, but also between teachers. This parenthesis usually changes the atmosphere in the classroom for the rest of the school year.
- To have some fun: A moment of collective life shared with the whole class is never commonplace in the social experience of a child and his teacher. The school trip is made of discoveries and encounters.
- To get out of the comfort zone: This is the opportunity for the students to leave the family cocoon or even their country, and share a moment of relaxation, in a pleasant environment.
What a reward for a teacher to see his students marveling and happy to learn! School trips are a way of making students want to be curious, to travel, to speak foreign languages. For some students, the school trip is the one and only possibility to travel.
The mission of the school trip is therefore to make them want to discover new things, to help them learn and to overcome their fear of the unknown.
Four good reasons to take field trips abroad
- Learn a foreign language: A real asset in the world of work but also on a personal level, learning a foreign language has become a must. And what could be better than a total immersion in an unknown land for learning a language?
Going abroad with your students is a great opportunity to combine business with pleasure by deepening or (by making them discover, for the stunned) the rudiments of the language of the country visited.
- Discover a new culture: Traveling in foreign territory is much more than a pretext for learning a language, traveling is also (and above all) going to discover the other, to open up, to flourish, to wonder about the other and take an interest in its habits and customs.
In contact with the local population, the student will be able to soak up a culture that is sometimes at odds with his own. Discovering the local gastronomy, heritage, local traditions and folklore are all elements that it is impossible to fully appreciate from a distance: nothing beats a trip!
- Learn and grow: Supervised but far from the usual family and school sphere, the school trip often represents the first trip alone outside the usual cocoon of the students. They will thus be able to gain maturity and confidence by actively participating in the trip offered to them, driven by the feelings of freedom and fulfilment that travel brings!
Because discovering a foreign country during a school trip is also having a thousand and one opportunities available to marvel at the richness of the world around us.
- Live an unforgettable human adventure: Going to conquer the world often involves two crucial discoveries for the student: a teacher is a person like everyone else and learning is fun! The perfect opportunity to build memories together, far from the sometimes too “strict” framework of the school. Learning becomes fun!
Why are school trips important anyway?
School trips are important since they aim to:
- Develop the spirit of observation, forming skills (field orientation, sketching simple landscapes, making schemes/drawings);
- Train the skill to use tools necessary for field research (compass);
- Train the ability to make short notes during the trip;
- Train the skills to collect, pack and transport the material collected on the trip;
- Train the skills to immortalize on film significant images from a geographical, historical point of view;
- Broad the didactic horizon, realizing the connection between theory and practice.
Any trip is an important means of hardening the body and unity of the team, concluding that in the field, compared to the classroom, the informative content of the lesson has a wider area of coverage of adjacent elements that define the category of notions proposed in the study.
Throughout the trip, the cause-effect links between the components of the environment must be understood, through stops in order to observe some works of land degradation or pollution, the observation of household waste thrown at random near waters, in places of relaxation in forests, in near the localities.
All types of trips respect these stages: preparatory, organizational, training of students to be able to achieve the objectives proposed during the activities, but also capitalizing on the results, being ideal occasions when the teacher can make students understand the notions of geography, natural sciences, the evolution of environmental phenomena, they come in direct contact with the surrounding reality, the interest in the study of these disciplines expanding.
The school trip is in fact a trip of at least one day, made outside the home/school environment, with an authorized means of transport, with the aim of recreating, visiting, informing, studying, broadening the teaching horizon, also making the connection between theory and practice.
This type of activity anticipates intuition, general knowledge, facilitating the success of learning, having the advantage of facilitating the observation of the elements of the environment as a whole, with specific interrelations, generating the deduction of the causes that generated them.
In terms of content there are several types of school trips:
- trips to get to know the natural components of the geographical landscape;
- trips to get to know certain socio-economic and cultural objectives of the geographical landscape;
- trips with mixed objectives.
The school trip is one of the most interesting, pleasant and useful extracurricular activities, causing direct contact with the environment, which means an active perception of geographical areas, landscapes, acting directly on them.
Through these actions children acquire information, form representations, live learning experiences, therefore, the content must be chosen carefully, well correlated with the purpose and objectives, the period to be appropriate for good development of the activity.
Final thoughts
Last but not least, travel changes our perceptions and gives us new perspectives on humanity and restores our confidence in the goodness of those around us, especially when they involve exchanges of cultural experiences.
When we get involved in other cultures we start to have experiences with different people and we notice that most people treat us in similar ways. School trips are also a great opportunity to get to know your classmates and teachers outside the school. It will help build your relationship stronger.
To travel is to learn. Far from being just an opportunity to turn university studies into an exciting experience, travelling is a fantastic way to learn more about yourself. Living abroad has been proven to develop a healthy sense of self.
Travel experiences often allow you to find answers to more existential questions such as “Who am I?” “And” What do I want to do with my life? And help you define an ideal future.
What do you think about school trips? Do you enjoy them or not? We’d love to know your thoughts!
FAQ on List five reasons for taking field trips
Why do we need field trips?
We need field trips to help us understand better what we have learned in school, to spend more time in nature, to get out of the comfort zone and see our teachers and classmates from a different perspective, in a different environment.
What can we learn from the field trip?
From the field trip, one can learn more about nature, a new language, more about a country’s culture and customs. Field trips offer us a different and more fun way to learn new things.
Do field trips help students learn?
Field trips help students learn in a different way, which may be more fun. Field trips teach you to listen, touch, feel the world around you.
What are the benefits of virtual field trips?
The benefits of virtual field trips are that they are not limited by the distance or a specific budget. You could “be” anywhere in the work in just a few clicks.
Why are field trips Bad?
Field trips also have a bad side: limited budgets, the need for chaperons, organising and planning. However, the advantages of field trips will always beat the disadvantages.
References
Aom.org
Uni-jena.de
Globalcoalitiononaging.com
