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Virtual Field Trips
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Unit: Rural, Urban and Suburban Communities
Students learn that there are three types of communities and each has distinct characteristics.
RURAL
During the Rural section of the lesson, students will go on a virtual field trip to a farm.
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP #1
http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/virtualfarm/
This virtual farm lets teachers choose from a variety of different types of farms. Within each section there are interviews by various different people that explain to students different aspects of the farms.
This virtual farm would definitely follow the standards that I have identified for this lesson.
These Standards will be touched during this lesson:
Resources/Materials for this lesson: (Recommended book is bold)
1. Tell students, “There are three types of communities. In this story, we will read about a little house and discuss how the community around it changes. Pay close attention to how the area around the house changes.”
2. Read aloud The Little House. At each point in the story where the community changes, the teacher will stop to discuss what the students notice about the community around the house.
3. Start a triple T-chart asking the children to tell what they notice about each type of community. (Keep chart available for the rest of the unit for children to add to.) Teachers may choose to have students complete their own T-chart as well.
4. Continue the discussion on communities by asking the students to
6. Students then fill out “Personal Connections” Worksheet. This worksheet helps them to make connections to where they live and the different types of communities we are learning about.
7. Students share the connections that they made with a partner.
Activities for younger students before the field trip: Horse Puppets
Reference: http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/farm.html
Activity to debrief the field trip: Students will create a shadow box to display what they learned about farms. They can choose any of the farms that we virtually visited. (Horse Farm, Dairy Farm or fish farm)
Visit this animoto for a slide show of the shadow box project:
http://animoto.com/play/76JZ6TpukVTjBRIJ4nfS3g
URBAN
During the Urban section of the lesson, students will go on a virtual field trip to Washington DC.
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP #2
http://ahp.gatech.edu/dc_map.html
This virtual field trip to Washington D.C. is not a very good site. Younger kids would be bored. Older kids would have to do a lot of reading. I would definitely want to find another virtual tour with more colored pictures and actual people being interviewed or a real tour guide talking while walking through the buildings. I really did like the link to the White House tour. It had color videos/pictures and was very informative and easy to use.
Even though I don’t love this virtual field trip, it does meet the criteria of the standards below.
These Standards will be touched during this lesson:
1. Remind students, “There are three types of communities. We have already talked about Rural communities and now we are going to talk about Urban Communities.
2. I would have students brainstorm about the things they might see in an Urban setting. I would have them chart things they think they might see in a big city.
3. I would have the students talk about what they know about Washington D.C. and I would have them do a little research to find out major tourist sites and historical relevance before going on the Virtual Tour.
Activity to debrief the field trip:
Students will get into groups of 2 or 3 and draw large murals of city scapes and/or their favorite buildings, monument or historical sites. Students will be instructed to be as descriptive as possible about the details they saw in the city virtual tour.
Students learn that there are three types of communities and each has distinct characteristics.
RURAL
During the Rural section of the lesson, students will go on a virtual field trip to a farm.
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP #1
http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/virtualfarm/
This virtual farm lets teachers choose from a variety of different types of farms. Within each section there are interviews by various different people that explain to students different aspects of the farms.
This virtual farm would definitely follow the standards that I have identified for this lesson.
These Standards will be touched during this lesson:
- SS.3.1: Geography can be divided into six essential elements which can be used to analyze important historic, geographic, economic, and environmental questions and issues. These six elements include: the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical settings (including natural resources), human systems, environment and society, and the use of geography.
- RL.2.1: Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
- RL.2.5: Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
- RL.2.9a: With prompting and support, students will make cultural connections to text and self.
- W.2.2: Write informative/explanatory texts in which they introduce a topic, use facts and definitions to develop points, and provide a concluding statement or section.
- Does where you live affect how you live?
Resources/Materials for this lesson: (Recommended book is bold)
- Burton, Virginia Lee. The Little House. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942. Fictional picture book. The rosy-pink Little House, on a hill surrounded by apple trees, watches the days go by from the first apple blossoms in the spring through the winter snows. Always faintly aware of the city's distant lights, she starts to notice the city encroaching on her. First, a road appears, which brings horseless carriages and then trucks and steamrollers. Before long, more roads, bigger homes, apartment buildings, stores, and garages surround the Little House. Her family moves out and she finds herself alone in the middle of the city, where the artificial lights are so bright that the Little House can no longer see the sun or the moon.
1. Tell students, “There are three types of communities. In this story, we will read about a little house and discuss how the community around it changes. Pay close attention to how the area around the house changes.”
2. Read aloud The Little House. At each point in the story where the community changes, the teacher will stop to discuss what the students notice about the community around the house.
3. Start a triple T-chart asking the children to tell what they notice about each type of community. (Keep chart available for the rest of the unit for children to add to.) Teachers may choose to have students complete their own T-chart as well.
4. Continue the discussion on communities by asking the students to
- decide what type of community they live in
- give reasons to support their answer.
6. Students then fill out “Personal Connections” Worksheet. This worksheet helps them to make connections to where they live and the different types of communities we are learning about.
7. Students share the connections that they made with a partner.
Activities for younger students before the field trip: Horse Puppets
Reference: http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/farm.html
Activity to debrief the field trip: Students will create a shadow box to display what they learned about farms. They can choose any of the farms that we virtually visited. (Horse Farm, Dairy Farm or fish farm)
Visit this animoto for a slide show of the shadow box project:
http://animoto.com/play/76JZ6TpukVTjBRIJ4nfS3g
URBAN
During the Urban section of the lesson, students will go on a virtual field trip to Washington DC.
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIP #2
http://ahp.gatech.edu/dc_map.html
This virtual field trip to Washington D.C. is not a very good site. Younger kids would be bored. Older kids would have to do a lot of reading. I would definitely want to find another virtual tour with more colored pictures and actual people being interviewed or a real tour guide talking while walking through the buildings. I really did like the link to the White House tour. It had color videos/pictures and was very informative and easy to use.
Even though I don’t love this virtual field trip, it does meet the criteria of the standards below.
These Standards will be touched during this lesson:
- SS.3.1: Geography can be divided into six essential elements which can be used to analyze important historic, geographic, economic, and environmental questions and issues. These six elements include: the world in spatial terms, places and regions, physical settings (including natural resources), human systems, environment and society, and the use of geography.
- RL.2.9a: With prompting and support, students will make cultural connections to text and self.
1. Remind students, “There are three types of communities. We have already talked about Rural communities and now we are going to talk about Urban Communities.
2. I would have students brainstorm about the things they might see in an Urban setting. I would have them chart things they think they might see in a big city.
3. I would have the students talk about what they know about Washington D.C. and I would have them do a little research to find out major tourist sites and historical relevance before going on the Virtual Tour.
Activity to debrief the field trip:
Students will get into groups of 2 or 3 and draw large murals of city scapes and/or their favorite buildings, monument or historical sites. Students will be instructed to be as descriptive as possible about the details they saw in the city virtual tour.
Virtual Travel: Online Field Trips for Students
Due to COVID restrictions, many schools are banning field trips. During regular times, trying to arrange a field trip entails a lot of work. Educators have to send out permission slips, and make arrangements for buses and chaperones. Now, with the availability of virtual field trips, students do not have to leave their classrooms or homes to explore places around the world. Some virtual field trips also allow students to discover what goes on in the outer space. Here are links to virtual field trips for different subjects.
Math
- Max's Fantastic Zoo: A virtual field trip that teaches K-2 students about animal shapes.
- Lure of the Labyrinth: Pre-algebra students can improve their math skills by solving math puzzles in this virtual tour.
- Endangered Species: A virtual field trip that provides grade 5-8 students an interesting insight into endangered species.
- Virtual Farm: This virtual farm can give grade K-6 students a complete experience of farm life.
- Introduction to Caves: Find out more about caves by going on this virtual tour.
- Planetarium: Grade 5-12 students can observe the night sky in this website.
- Visit a Volcano: Take virtual trips to various volcanoes in the United States.
- Essay Writing Virtual Trip: An essay writing virtual trip for grade 8-12 students.
- Poet's Pantry Field Trip: An online field trip that teaches grade 3-6 students about poetry.
- Civil War Virtual Tour: Virtual tour for grade 6-12 students to learn about the Civil War.
- Rome Virtual Tour: Discover the historic city of Rome by taking this virtual tour.
- Tour of the Forbidden City: Virtual trip that enables grade 4-12 students to explore the Forbidden City.
- World War I Virtual Trip: Grade 6-12 students can find out what happened during the World War I in this site.
- Pyramids: An online adventure that provides an interesting insight into the construction of the Pyramids.
- Destination Modern Art: An interactive tour of the Museum of Modern Art for children of all ages.
- Art Institute of Chicago: Students of all ages can learn more about art by taking this virtual tour.
- Cave Paintings of Lascaux: A virtual visit to the famous cave paintings in Lascaux, France.
- Grandpa's Painting: Virtual field trip that involves the investigation of artworks.
Virtual Field Trips
I especially love websites that offer virtual tours and live webcams to show kids what it REALLY looks like in another world location. Many famous museums such as the Louvre offer 360 degree tours of their collections. The Eiffel Tower site shows a panoramic birds-eye view of Paris—with the city taking center stage rather than the traditional image of the Tower itself dominating the horizon. Engaging images help kids relate to the new culture and make comparisons with their own. The Google Art Project also gives virtual field trips to prominent art museums around the world.
We have also found web cams of the storks roosting on roof tops in Rust, Austria, and have shared our own local webcams of Niagara Falls with our pen-pal classrooms in other countries to give them an idea of our region.
-Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
This comprehensive virtual tour allows visitors using a desktop computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) to take a virtual, self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum. You can even browse a list of past exhibits, which is included on the ground floor map (see upper right map buttons).
- Moon Tour
With Moon in Google Earth, you can:
- Take tours of landing sites, narrated by Apollo astronauts
- View 3D models of landed spacecraft
- Zoom into 360-degree photos to see astronauts' footprints
- Watch rare TV footage of the Apollo missions
- Google Art Project
Explore the site by selecting an art collection, an artist or an artwork. Click on the yellow “pegman” icon to visit these institutions virtually. Filter artworks by medium or make a search by keyword. Finally create and share your personal selection of artworks in the “My Galleries” section and explore other users’ galleries.
- World Wonders Project
From the archaeological areas of Pompeii to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Google’s World Wonders Project aims to bring to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.
- Eternal Egypt
Eternal Egypt is a living record of a land rich in art and history, people and places, myths and religions. The stories of Eternal Egypt are told using the latest interactive technologies, high-resolution imagery, animations, virtual environments, remote cameras, three-dimensional models and more.
There are many ways to begin your journey through Eternal Egypt. The guided tour is a quick way to experience the best that the site has to offer. You can also begin with one of the cultural highlights below, or make your own discoveries using one of the many other ways to explore.
- A Virtual Tour of Museums and Exhibits
These Sites present over 300 Museums, Exhibits, Points of Special Interest and Real-Time journeys which offer online multimedia guided tours on the Web. Most of the following offer text and pictures, others in addition transmit sound and an occasional movie.
- Digital Field Trip to The Rain-forest
Experience a tropical rain forest and learn about the wonders of this incredible environment.
- Virtual Field Trips
Collections
- Blackwell's Best Virtual Field Trips - Vicki Blackwell provides a list of virtual field trips and museums.
- HomeworkSpot Archive of Field Trips - A large range of topics, from a Chocolate Factory to the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.
- Internet Field Trips from Scholastic - Scholastic provides an index, organizing their trips into five areas: Reading/Language Arts , Science , Math , Social Studies , and K-2 .
- OOPS (Our Overnight Planning System) provides a long list of virtual field trips. At the bottom of the page you will find four ideas for using virtual field trips. One idea that we liked was having students create virtual postcards using MS Word.
- Tech Trekers provides a long list of what they call virtual field trips. Some are not, and they insist on using all caps, but you may find some jewels here.
- Links to other field trips found on the web.
· Virtual Exhibits - Scroll past their welcome screen to see their listing.
· Virtual Field Trips from Teacher's Guide.
· Virtual Special Exhibits - Scroll past their welcome screen to see their listing.
