Virtual Field Trips

There have been so many times in the course of my teaching career where my students and I finished up a unit, and I really could see the benefits of taking them on a field trip to explore the topic that we had just been studying….But then I’d remember what an actual pain planning a field trip can be. Plus in an age of distance-learning, are field trips even a thing right now??

My friend Briana Beverly and I decided that we wanted to give teachers an already-planned, hands-on way to engage their students in the skills they were talking about. So, we created virtual field trips! Today, I want to talk to you all about this new product line, and answer some questions! Hopefully you’ll see why we love these so much!

What is a virtual field trip? 

A virtual field trip is a digital exploration of a topic or place, done completely from a computer. You can take a break from your normal teaching routines and get kids logged into a virtual field trip to deepen their understanding of some thing that you have been talking about.

When would I use a virtual field trip?

We created our virtual field trips to be versatile and flexible enough to be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. Some ways that we thought of were:

-end of unit review

-A series of lessons broken up over the course of a week

-an early finisher station

-a center activity

-or however else you’d like to use them! 

What’s included in a virtual field trip?

In general, virtual field trips come with the actual field trip part, embedded into a digital presentation. Many virtual field trips also come with some variety of paired activities. 

The first virtual field trip in our series is centered around taking your students to the zoo without ever leaving your classroom. This is what comes in this set:

-a virtual tour of different zoo exhibits. Students can click on links embedded in the exhibits to watch Live camera footage of animals at different zoos across the country, or read brief articles about an animal.

-A scavenger hunt for students to collect information as they tour the zoo

-A brief research project with animal trading cards. Students fill in facts about different animals to create a deck of cards. If you want to differentiate this assignment, you can lessen the number of animal students need to research, or use pre-filled trading cards with the information already typed in.

-trading card games. Using the deck of cards that students create or that you prepare in advance, students can play different car games that reinforce their learning for the day 

-A zoo exhibit journal. After the virtual field trip is over and students have completed their animal research, you can have students sort and store their cards in a printable exhibit journal. The tasks included in the journal ask students to apply some of the learning that they did that day to some brief creative tasks.

-zookeeper application. Have students sharpen their persuasive writing skills by applying for a job at the zoo and trying to persuade you as to why they would be the best for that job.

We created the virtual field trips to be used either for in classroom instruction, or to be used with distance-learning. If you are totally remote right now, you may want the digital version of the field trip. Instead of printable cards and journals, everything is in bedded into Google slides so it’s easy to just share the file with your students for them to complete at home.

Take a look at the videos below to get an idea of what these field trips look like!