Here’s how to incorporate virtual field trips into your Middle School ELA Classroom.
Time: 15 minutes or less for each one
Rationale: Enhance speaking and listening skills while providing opportunities for authentic reading and writing both during and after any of the virtual tours. Make connections between text, world, and self based on similar locations, topics, themes, or ideas studied in class. Build curiosity for current or future student-centered research lessons or to provide supplementary content for informational/expository lessons.
*** Personally, I love to keep a growing collection of pre-approved virtual field trips that students can participate in when they finish something early. It stops the whole “I’m done, now what?” question, and it always provides a focused next step for those who “seem” to have nothing to do (wink).
Virtual Field Trip Ideas & Website Links for Quick Access:
✅ Visit and read through a typical day in the Anne Frank annex where she hid for 700+ days with her family > > Click Here < <
✅ Visit the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum for a 360 degree tour throughout the space > > Click Here < <
✅ Select specific types of virtual tours at The Smithsonian > > Click Here < <
✅ For your musically-motivated students, check out this virtual tour of classical, jazz, rock ‘n roll, and country music virtual tour (headphones needed!) > > Click Here < <
✅ How about major student choice between choosing to virtually visit a zoo, outer space, or even a trek up Mt. Everest? Lots of choice > > Click Here < <
✅ And finally, this link provides 20+ ideas for virtual field trips across a wide range of topics and grade levels (perfect if you’re filling in for another teacher or if you’re doing some extra clubs or tutoring outside of school).
Now for the big question:
What to have students DO during or after a virtual tour online?
I recommend a simple choice board with 9 options that students can work from again and again. You can create it one time and have students choose 1, 2, or 3 tasks from the choice board so you don’t have to worry about planning out a whole lesson every time you want to invite students to participate in a virtual tour. That being said, I don’t assign a “product” every time.
As stated earlier, I often rely on virtual tours as a “what do I do when I’m done” activity and in that case, I don’t always want to create more work for myself by assigning yet another thing that must be assessed. 🥴
If you do feel the need to include some kind “product” that students have to create based on their virtual tour experiences, then let’s visit the choice board option.
Since virtual tours work really well for all kinds of things like making connections to fiction or non-fiction topics already studied in class, here are some prompts you could use to help creaete your own choice board:
Choice Board Prompts to Support Connections to Fiction Text Elements:
- Create a dialogue between two characters from the story if they had actually traveled to the destination in the virtual tour. Use correct elements of dialogue such as quotation marks, paragraphs, etc.
- Explain which elements from the virtual tour seemed pretty different from how they were presented in the story.
- What information or experiences from the virtual tour should have also been included in the story?
- What facts or details in the story don’t seem accurate based on what you experienced from the virtual tour?
- Which parts of the story seem very accurate, like the author must have really researched?
- What details of the story’s setting seem similar to what you viewed in the virtual tour?
- How does the author’s description of places in the story compare to what you saw in the virtual tour?
- What was missing from the virtual tour that you think should have been included because of what you read in the story?
- Make a list of three topics or questions you’re still curious about that the virtual tour didn’t really explain.
Choice Board Prompts to Support Connections to Non-Fiction Text Elements:
- Summarize the virtual tour in three sentences so other students know what to expect. Keep your summary factual and not based on your personal opinion.
- Which part of the virtual tour made sense to you, and which part was a bit confusing?
- If you were the boss, what would you include in this virtual tour to make it better (more interesting, more helpful, etc.)
- What other types of virtual tours would you want to see related to what you experienced with this one?
- Explain how the information in the virtual tour was organized (was it chronological, or step-by-step, or more of a how-to, or something else?)
- What would it take to make the virtual tour more relevant or more important to students right now?
- If you could change the way the information was laid out in the virtual tour, what would you change or how would you change it?
- What would make for a good story (fictional) or movie based on what you saw in the virtual tour?
- Make a list of three topics or questions you’re still curious about that the virtual tour didn’t really explain.
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