How to Include Language Arts in Virtual Field Trips

(474 Words)
Not every classroom or home school can send students on a real life field trip. Physical, financial and other boundaries prevent such trips, but that does not mean that you cannot virtually travel far beyond the classroom with the computer. A virtual field trip can be an excellent way to teach children about language arts.
Imagine taking your students to meet the great writers, and not only those of the current time. In a virtual field trip, you can take the students to meet Shakespeare or Jane Austin. Let the children truly feel that they are seeing these authors and learning about their works.
You can create this virtual field trip for students in many different ways. You can go to websites, which show photographs of the authors. For instance, if you put in Jane Austen in a Google search you will get a variety of photographs back, which you can show the children. You can take them to the Jane Austen Society of North America at http://www.jasna.org/info/about_austen.html and teach them about her biography and works. Show them online video of movies based on her works such as Emma.
Language arts can be incorporated into practically any virtual field trip. For instance, let’s say it is a virtual field trip to a science museum. You can have the children write a report on what they liked about the video. Thus not only will they learn about science, but they will learn about expressing their feelings in the written word as well.
A reference book can be very useful to help you plan these. New Virtual Field Trips by Gail Cooper and Garry Cooper gives information on many different websites that provide virtual field trips. You can also look for websites that allows students to explore books. For instance, http://www.meetmeatthecorner.org/ has the Big Apple Book Club, which gives video book reviews made by children and geared for children.
Look for resources that can help you find the language arts virtual field trip that is right for you. Internet4Classrooms (http://www.internet4classrooms.com/links_grades_kindergarten_12/virtual_field_trips_collections.htm) is an excellent website that features links to many different resources for virtual field trips. These include those that have language arts as a subject.
Scholastic (http://teacher.scholastic.com/fieldtrp/index.htm) offers many different Internet field trips for children of different ages. These include different topics in language arts such as Create-a-Card and The Collossus Writing Project Writing Process Grades 6-8 for writing, April is the Funniest Month and Worldwide Wordplay for vocabulary and Pre-Reading and Beyond Grades K-2 and Essential Children’s Literature Sites for children’s literature. They give suggestions on using specific websites to take the children on a journey through these subjects related to language arts.
A virtual field trip can be an excellent way to teach students about language arts. The above resources can help you find the virtual field trip that is right for your classroom.