I love this New Yorker cartoon, and sometimes the best place to teach a concept actually is "inside the box" or rather in your classroom - but sometimes the best way to engage the students' imaginations and senses is to take the learning outside. Dave Burgess in Teach Like a Pirate suggests asking yourself while you are lesson planning "Where is the best place to teach this concept to my students?"
Well designed field trips can be wonderful, but are often not feasible and we have to be creative about how we take a "field trip." A unit that I have taught in the past that I loved involved visiting a local elementary school where my high school students interviewed a partner and worked with their grade-school collaborator to write a children's book. They were fully engaged in the learning process to make sure that their partner got the best book possible from them. They learned about appropriate diction and voice, precision of language, sensory images, plot elements, dialogue, and creating engaging images to complement the story. The elementary school was up the street and we were able to walk there, work with the younger students, and walk back within our time period. My students loved it and the elementary students loved it. Most of my students chose to make two copies of their book so that they could keep one for themselves as well as give the required book to their partner.
Well designed field trips can be wonderful, but are often not feasible and we have to be creative about how we take a "field trip." A unit that I have taught in the past that I loved involved visiting a local elementary school where my high school students interviewed a partner and worked with their grade-school collaborator to write a children's book. They were fully engaged in the learning process to make sure that their partner got the best book possible from them. They learned about appropriate diction and voice, precision of language, sensory images, plot elements, dialogue, and creating engaging images to complement the story. The elementary school was up the street and we were able to walk there, work with the younger students, and walk back within our time period. My students loved it and the elementary students loved it. Most of my students chose to make two copies of their book so that they could keep one for themselves as well as give the required book to their partner.
Last year a colleague and I had the students create their own poetry/art with museum cards. We hung their pieces out in the commons area of our school and then we took our students on a "field trip" museum walk to view the poetry art and to respond to what they saw. Not only did the learning incorporate poetry and presentation, students were motivated by the fact that their work would be on display where the entire student body would be passing it multiple times a day.
This year I am planning to help my yearbook students get to know each other, learn more about some of the basic yearbook skills, bond with each other and with their editors, by having them doing a type of "scavenger hunt" competition. I will be dividing the staffers into groups of 5-6 and including an editor with each group. Each group will complete tasks such as which group can build the most creative structure using toothpicks and marshmallows, the first group that has 100% of its members that can name every person in the room, best t-shirt design (winning design will become this year's staff t-shirt, best photo (they'll do a mini photo scavenger hunt within this), best headline, etc. These activities will move between the classroom and the rest of the school to complete. I hope to report back here on how it went.
While we cannot ignore the box - we must be aware of its parameters, functions, and strengths - we should ask ourselves if the box is the best place for the lesson we are teaching