Pre-Visit Lesson Plan Ideas

Making Connections

Before you venture out on your field trip, it is important to make connections between what you are learning in the classroom and on the field trip. By building your field trip experience into your classroom experience, you can deepen your students' learning and their engagment in the subject.

Ask yourself:

  • What is the big idea of this field trip?

  • What inquiry science unit does this field trip support?

  • How can I make connections before, during and after the field trip to the inquiry science unit?  

 

Prepare your Students

Offer one or two short lessons before heading out on your field trip that illustrate a couple of concepts:

  • Introduce the main idea of the trip.

  • Introduce important vocabulary, knowing that you will review this vocabulary after the field trip.

  • Prepare students for museum behavior and activities.

Examples of Pre-Visit Lesson Plans for Field Trips to the National Air and Space Museum:

 

Field Trip Stories

Another great way to engage your students before their field trip is to prepare them through a "Field Trip Story". Field Trip Stories are very visual and can assist students in thinking ahead about their field trip. This preparation is especially helpful for students who are going on a field trip for the very first time, or for students who are easily overwhelmed by changing their routine.

Here is an example of a Field Trip Story for a field trip to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. You can use this template for any field trip that you take. You can create the story on a Power Point and show it on your interactive white board or projector during circle time, or you can print the images for your students to hold and pass around during circle time. You can even post the images on a board in your classroom for parents to see. This may even encourage parents to join you for the field trip!

  • You are going to take a bus! 

  • You will have a bus driver. The bus driver will take you to the museum. 

  • There will be comfy seats on the bus! And you can look out the window. The bus will take you to the museum! 

  • Here is the National Air and Space Museum! It is a big building. What shapes do you see in the building? Where do you think the doors are? Can you find the tall statue when you arrive? 

  • There will be many places where you can find shadows in the museum. 

  • A museum teacher will greet you when you arrive. 

  • You will get to sit in the planetarium with your class! 

  • The lights will get very low and the show will begin! You will see Big Bird, Elmo, and their friend, Hu-Hu Zhu.

  • You will have lunch at the museum, and then take the bus back to school! 

  • Elmo and Hu-Hu Zhu used their imagination to go to the moon. See if you can find the moon in the sky. Sometimes we see it in the day time, but mostly we see it at night time. Is the moon near, or far?

  • Can you make your own shadow puppets at school? Or at home? For inside and outside?