Why Do We Need Field Trips in Teaching?
With the availability of learning materials on the Internet, some teachers and students may question why field trips are needed anymore. Field trips can be troublesome and difficult to organize and supervise. But they do provide learning opportunities that cannot be experienced in the classroom.
Other People Are Reading
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Real-Life Context
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Field trips provide real-life context for the material being learned. Ideas can make more sense and be remembered better if students can actually see where and how it works or takes place in reality.
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Integrated Learning
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Field trips can not only teach one idea, but many. A field trip to a vegetable farm, for example, can bring disparate topics together, such as photosynthesis, the scientific method, how to collect data, plants, insects, parts of flowers, soil erosion and math.
Additional Resources
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Field trips can provide additional resources for learning that neither classroom learning nor computer-assisted learning can. For example, a science field trip can allow for field labs, an extended length of time spent in a natural area for students to collect data, experiment and draw conclusions.
Tactile
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Field trips allow for actual tactile experiences. Students, especially children, learn and remember better through experiences where they are allowed to touch and manipulate the material about which they are learning.
Cooperative
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Field trips are taken in large groups. It can provide a good opportunity for students to work together cooperatively with others.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit "Cows Again" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: Or Hiltch (Or Hiltch) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
