Field visits for active learning

Inside and outside the classroom children are learning all the time. As a teacher, a major part of your role is to harness the curiosity, the physical energy, and the mental development of the children in your class and channel these into learning activities.

Three effective channels include:

- field visits
- thematic activities
- games for learning

Field visits

In field visits, children go outside the classroom - to the school garden, to a tube well or a community dam, or to a museum, for example - to observe specific organisms or phenomena, or to hear information from experts.

Field visits can support small-group work. In a visit to a community dam, for example, each group in a fifth-grade class can be given a set of assignments. Before going to the dam, group members might learn about the importance of water to human life and agriculture. At the dam, each group might be asked to: measure the width of the dam in paces; map the area immediately affected by the dam; represent the kinds of trees and other plants in the area in drawings; to listen to information offered to the class by a government engineer.

When the class returns from the dam, each group might be asked to use the information that they have gathered to prepare presentations or reports of their observations, discussing the importance of the dam to local communities.

In visits to the school garden or locales, each group might be asked to perform a single task, with each task complementing the others: to catalogue the kinds and estimate the numbers of insects; to catalogue the kinds and numbers of plants; to look for signs of mammals, such as holes, burrows, or gnawed roots; to map and measure the garden. Back in the classroom, the groups can add their reports to a class "garden reports" centre or create a class Garden Display. Depending on the nature of the field visit, various elements may enable successful learning outside the classroom:

• preparatory research, whole-class discussion, or inquiry
• assistance by adult aides, mentors, or family members
• opportunities to listen to and interview experts
• specific activities and assignments for groups, pairs or individual students

For more information, see Arranging space inside and outside the classroom and Managing the active classroom.

Journal activity: Circles of learning

Identify all the different opportunities for field visits within a short distance from your classroom.

In the middle of a page of your journal, draw a small square to represent your classroom. Around it, draw a circle to represent your school. Around the school circle, draw another circle to represent your town or your city district. Start with the school circle. Does the school keep farm or other animals? Is there a garden plot? Are there trees or fields? Are there bird nests or ant hills? Within the circle, write the names of every learning opportunity outside the classroom.

Next, move on to circle for your town or city district. Consider the shops and businesses that might be interesting: is there an auto mechanic who might explain how engines work? Is there a farmer with special crops, such as citrus trees, or special animals? Is there a museum or a park or a field? Write the names of these learning opportunities in the circle.

Finally, on the edges of the page, write in the most distant field visits sites you can imagine: Is there a national park? Is there a beach or seashore? A zoo? When you plan your actual visits, start with the sites that are easy to reach. Use the sites on your school grounds to help your class learn about appropriate behaviour outside the classroom, and to learn how to work together in groups. When you travel to a more distant field site, your class will be eager to learn and co-operate, and easily and safely managed.

As you and other teachers in your school initiate field visits, post your observations to the forum section. In what ways are field visits useful? What challenges do they present? What are the most valuable visits that your class makes?

You may also wish to review a sample lesson on The Red Sugar Cane or Traditional Costumes (from the Vietnam Multigrade Teaching Handbook, Module 5).