27 March 2017

PYP Field trips, Vandana Parashar PYP Coordinator

A field trip opens up children’s minds to new possibilities and learnings. At Pathways we continually  strive to provide our students with engaging and exciting field trips which allow them to be an adventurer, an explorer and a learner. Extending learning beyond classrooms has its own relevance and we have seen a significant rise in student thinking and their ability to make connections with what was taught inside the classrooms.

These field trips are carefully chosen and planned keeping the learning objectives for a particular age group in mind. In early years, we concentrate on taking children outdoors for a real life experience.
Our Nursery students went to the Zoo recently while they were learning about living beings and got pretty excited about seeing the animals in real- for the first time! For them, the sight of a rhino or a tiger was so fascinating that they kept talking about how these animals walked, ran and lived in the ‘jungle’. Similarly, the pre-nursery tiny-tots visited a vegetable store when they were learning about things we eat. When we allowed them to pick their own food items that are healthy, we saw a transformation in all the kids as they applied their learning to fill the basket- and supported their choice with a  good reason! We have also had our KG students visit farms where the students got real life experiences of vegetable which grow underground (and the ones that grow on creepers) and they were allowed to pull them out; wash and eat!

As we move high up the grades, our trips become more structured aiming at unit related learning.
Grade 3 students visited different historical monuments to understand what monuments are and what they tell us about the past. Their initial ideas and expressions got transformed as they went for historical walks with professional groups like Itihaas and Intach. Appreciation of history and the architecture is what we intend to develop through such excursions. Grade 4 students while learning about Migrants, visited a Tibetan colony in New Delhi which still nurtures its
tradition and culture. Students interviewed the migrants and got familiar with their lives, and the struggles they went through during the migration period and also while resettling in India. This experience not only enhanced their understanding of what migration and resettlement means, but also encouraged them to empathize with the people as well as appreciate the way they have upheld their culture and traditions. Some of the most exciting trips were planned by our Art teachers when they took the students to the National Gallery of Modern arts to show them what installations are and how they depict an artist’s vision and thinking. We also planned a trip to Kiran Nadar gallery in Noida, where the students were exposed to some very unique medium of presentations.

Not all the trips are planned by the teachers! As equal partners, parents have suggested and organized some very informative and highly engaging field trips for our students. One such example was Grade 3’s trip to Café Ohio where the students learned how to make healthy snacks, while inquiring into balanced diet. Similarly, last year, a parent had invited the Grade 5 students to see the back-end operations of a five star hotel. This was in conjunction with a unit on economic activity. There are times when the trip are identified and planned by the students. For the PYP exhibition this
year, some of the student groups who were inquiring into how NGOs work, got in touch with different NGOs and planned a couple of trips focusing on interviewing the managers to learn more about their organizations. Similarly, the group inquiring into religious systems also found out that visiting a Gurudwara might help them learn more about the Sikh religion. Once they experienced success with this trip, they planned another trip to the Lotus temple to learn about the Baha’i  faith as well as to ISCKON to find more about their belief system. When the students take ownership of their learning, we see a change in their confidence and attitude towards learning.

We continue to look for more spaces and places where our children can learn through experience and exposure. Because this is where the real learning is!