Exploring the Red River: Field Trips
Field trips are important for firsthand experience. The oldest places in your community-the town square, riverbank, early homes-are wonderful locations for student research. Students can photograph and draw the scenes, interview longtime residents, and find the locations on old maps.
Whole-class field trips can be difficult and expensive to arrange. You may want to ask parents to drive several small groups of students on field trips to different nearby destinations, so that each group can pursue a different research question. This will broaden the range of your research and enable students to collaborate more.
Pre-trip Activities
Review the class's research questions with the students. Discuss various possible field trip destinations and what types of information the students are likely to obtain at each. Choose destinations.
Plan interview questions if necessary. Make sure the interviewers have copies of the questions and take a back-up copy yourself. Round up cassette recorders, cassette tapes, extra batteries, cameras, film, sketch pads or clipboards, pencils, maps, and one or more tote bags. Discuss which students will carry the equipment.
Examine any current and old maps that are available. (See the page, "Using Maps.")
Work with the students to develop a form and checklist for taking notes in the field. Duplicate and give a copy to each student on the day of the trip.
Field Trip Activities
Look for:
River landings
Wildlife
Remnants of old sidewalks
Old fence lines
Old barns, gasoline stations, houses
Provide a simple field trip observation checklist so that students can take notes. Older students may also make notes in notebooks or blank sketchpads.
Post-trip Activities
If you took photographs, have the film developed and printed as quickly as possible. Post all sketches, photographs, and notes on a bulletin board for students to review. If possible, display old and current photographs of the same scenes or people side by side, to illustrate how change has occurred. Make labels to identify the photographs or drawings.
Most importantly, take time to talk with the students about what they saw on the field trips. What did they learn? Did they find new information to help answer their research questions? How can they present and interpret their findings?
Involve the students in evaluating the field trip. Was it successful? Were there any problems? How could future field trips be better? Write down their ideas and consider them in planning future field trips.
Work with the students to plan the next research steps. What more do they need to find out to answer their research questions? Should they write letters to local officials? Plan oral history interviews? Go to the nearest public library? The students' abilities to make after-school visits for interviews or research will vary, so take that into account.
Involve Families!
Ask families to: suggest field trip destinations; accompany classes or small groups on field trips; meet groups at the field trip destinations; or photograph or video-record the field trip.
After the field trip, keep families informed. Involve the class in writing a field report to send home to parents. This activity could be part of students' final projects.
© Red River Rural Schools Partnership 1998
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