Last week I took the class on a field trip to Earthwise Gardens. Earthwise gardens is a local organic farm that I was familiar with from my time working with the Chamber of Commerce in the community. One of my friends also worked there as a gardener so the location had been on my radar for a while! I knew they did “eco-tours” for school groups and I called to ask about a tour for our class. One of their regular programs is about pollinators- a topic we’ve been studying! When I told the education programmer that we were especially interested in bees she contacted the beekeeper and we received an engaging tour of the hives. We donned bee suits, learned about different plants indigenous to Delta, what types of flowers bees prefer, what bees do in the winter and how the bee keeper cares for them! The experience was very interactive. We saw the paint the keeper uses to mark the Queen Bee, we saw inside the hive, we even tasted honey and a few brave students held bees. No one was stung! We are were all mindful and respectful of the bees. If a bee got very close to us we practiced mindful breathing.
I would highly recommend Earthwise gardens to other teachers!
Making an unusual day productive:
Something a little unorthodox that I did was that I planned the field trip on the same day as the district track meet. Some people would avoid this day but I strategically made the decision. I wanted to have as normal of a day as possible, even with eight students away for the track meet and a long weekend coming up for the students because of Victoria Day and a professional day. This is how I made the most of the day:
– At the beginning of the week I started reader’s theatre. I made it clear that next Tuesday would be the day we perform. I made a clear schedule of how to stay on track and posted it to the board. This set up Thursday as the last day to practice. On Thursday morning the students knew what to expect and were ready to get started.
-I created groups of 3-5 for the project. The eight people going to the track meet were in groups together. This way on Thursday morning no one was missing a group member during the rehearsal time.
-I politely asked the other intermediate teachers if I could keep my group together for Thursday due to our field trip in the afternoon. I did not receive any students from other classes on this particular day. I felt that I had planned my activities and organized my students in a way that I had enough students left to have a normal instructional day. I know that one of the grade seven teachers had also asked to keep her group together too. Last week with only a few students left from my class I didn’t mind at all taking in students from various classes. However with the majority of my students left I was a little bit cautious not to get too off track from our regular activities!
This looks like it was a wonderful field trip. The experience would have been amazing. I think I would hesitate to plan one again on a day where you know some will be missing as those students did not get to share in this terrific experience. It definitely looks and sounds like a trip to continue planning in future!