Why Field Trips?Positive Impact of Field Trips on

Learning

By Tommy Diamond

The Theory

• Field trips allow students to see things as they really are-complicated and imperfect-and not as they might be idealized in a textbook.It gives the student a chance to experience and to see the relevance of a subject in the real world.

Five Attributed Values of Field Trips

• Providing first-hand experience

• Stimulating interest & motivation in science

• Giving meaning to learning and interrelationships

• Observation and perception skills

• Personal and social development

Field trips inspire students to continue other scientific studies

• Data compiled in Mesa, AZ schools demonstrated that “96% of those students entering from a hands on science program in elementary grades opted to continue their science studies in high school, while only 4% of the students in the textbook study program continued in high school science programs” (Milson, 1990,p.2).

Meeting the Challenge of Interest

• As a science teacher, it is my goal and challenge to improve thinking skills, interest, and success in the area of science. To do this I feel it is sometimes necessary to step out of the conventional/formal classroom and into the world that surrounds us.

Providing first-hand experience

• Above right students take water sample test on Galveston Island.

• Below right students excavate dinosaur bone fossil from Big Bend National Park

Observation and perception skills

• Students observing geological features in the Marathon Basin area.

Personal and social development

• Student pose for a group picture at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis mountains of Texas.