Q&A for How to Plan a Class Field Trip

This would be an emergency situation. Call 911 immediately, do a headcount to ensure there are no more missing children, secure the remaining children, and notify the school. Follow your school’s emergency protocols.

You should try to include as many students as possible, but if that is not possible work with your supervisor to select students keeping safety and the educational purpose of the trip in mind. It is your responsibility to be inclusive. If you cannot accommodate all of the students with the trip consider another trip, location, hosting a “reverse field trip” where the venue comes to you, or canceling the trip altogether.

Museums can be educational on a number of levels depending on your learning objectives. For instance, if you are teaching a university class on public history, you may want to attend a museum in order allow your students to analyze how historical material is displayed to the public, and what information is being communicated to the public through the display. Alternatively, if you are teaching an elementary level history class that is studying the lives of early North American settlers, you may want to attend a museum to demonstrate some of the artifacts and materials that early settlers used. You could also have your students dress up in period clothes so they could have a better idea of what life would have been like. There are multiple ways that a teacher can make a museum visit educational.

In order to convince your school principal or school board of the benefits of a class trip, you need to clearly outline the educational purpose of the trip. For example, determine how the class trip will fit within the current curriculum and how it will help educate the students in a more dynamic and interesting way. Provide examples of how you are going to incorporate the trip into your lesson plans leading up to event. This will clearly highlight the educational motivations for the trip and will help you gain permission.

You should go over general rules and safety precautions with your students prior to a class trip. For example, you may want to put them into pairs (or buddies) so that no child is ever left alone. Inform the students that they need to ask to go to the washroom, and that they are not allowed to leave the facility without permission from a teacher or chaperone. You may also want to go over basic traffic safety, or any other safety tips that may be associated with the specific activity they are engaging in.

Send home a permission form for the trip and include an envelope that needs to be returned, along with the signed permission form, and the necessary money for the field trip. State clearly on the form that all money needs to be received prior to the trip or else the child will not be eligible to attend.

You could ask the children to each give a brief presentation about something they saw or learned while at the park. For example, the following day in class each child could share a story with their classmates about their favourite thing about the national park. You may also want to speak with park staff to see if there are any games or activities provided by the park that would be suitable for young children. Perhaps they could play a game that required them to communicate with each other while visiting the park.

Prior to the field trip, speak to your class about where you are going. Have them prepare questions about what they would like to know about your destination, and encourage them to write down the answers they find and their overall impressions of the place.