Part #1: Little House on the Prairie Virtual Field Trip Part #2: American History Virtual Field Trip 3rd Grade's Virtual Field Trip location was a little selfish on my part. NYC is my VERY FAVORITE place to visit! I couldn't go in real life so this was second best...right? Week 1: Welcome to New York! For the first week I did an intro to New York City with a virtual tour of Times Square. YouVisit also has a great photo tour of New York City! It has really great 360 degree HD photos of most of NYC's most popular tourist attractions. Put these up on the Promethean Board and its almost like you are there...almost! We also explored the New York Philharmonic's Kids page. This is a great interactive page that the kids loved exploring later! During check out time I let them watch a few of YouTube clips of Disney Broadway shows. *We looked at several live web cam views of NYC. These are great...but you might want to preview them ahead of time to make sure there is nothing inappropriate! You never know what might be in Times Square....hello Naked Cowboy. Week 2: Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty Scholastic has a great interactive tour of Ellis Island. It walks you through each step of the journey a new immigrant would have taken. It has videos, photos, and audio that tells the stories of real immigrants that came through Ellis Island. It is a great first hand account of what coming to American would have been like. The National Park Service has a link to a couple of great live webcams of various views from and of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Week 3: NYC Museums I began this week by introducing some of the many great museums in New York City. I showed the kids a few pictures of the museums I have visited while in NYC. Several of the museums have really great interactive websites for kids. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a great Kid's Zone! It has videos that teach about different artists and pieces of art featured in the museum. There are also some interactive exhibits that introduce pieces of art that are in the museum, the artist, and allows the kids to try out the technique used by that artist. The kids really enjoyed revisiting this site later.
The MOMA Art Lab App - The app includes information on art featured at MOMA and the artists' techniques. It allows the kids to try out many of these techniques. They can create a mobile, sound composition, line design, shape poem, draw with scissors, experiment with paint, and draw from instructions. This app was VERY popular with the kids. They could have spent the entire library time on this app alone. They had to work in pairs because we don't have enough IPads for everyone to work alone. It was really neat to walk around and hear the discussions about what they were creating and why they should use a certain object, color, ect. They wouldn't have had these same types of discussions working alone. We have revisited the Art Lab several times even after our Virtual Field Trip was over. Week 4: Central Park and The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade The last week of our virtual field trip fell the week before Thanksgiving. I had planned on visiting Central Park for the last week but decided to also visit the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Central Park: The Central Park Conservancy website has a great guided virtual tour of the park. You are able to "walk" through the park and read facts about the park and well as hear narration along the tour. Throughout the tour there are photos, videos, and 360 degree panoramas of some of Central Parks most famous landmarks.
*I put many of the links for both the 3rd and 4th/5th Grade Virtual Field Trips on my library website so that the students would have access to continue learning and exploring on their own in the computer lab, classroom or at home.
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*Originally posted January 5, 2015* Part 1 can be found here: Little House on the Prairie Virtual Field Trip For this virtual field trip I grouped 4th and 5th grade together. Weeks 1 and 2 were spent introducing the concept of a virtual field trip and exploring one website together as a class. At this point, I felt that the students understood the purpose of our virtual field trip and could work independently. Weeks 3 and 4 were spent working and learning independently or in a small group. The kids really thrived in these weeks. I put together resources for these weeks, and they could also choose to go back to any of the resources we had previously explored as a class. They loved being able to choose what they wanted to learn about and what resources and technology they would use in their exploration. I gave each class a couple of guidelines: 1. You may choose any resource off of the 4th and 5th Grade list or in the 4th and 5th Grade Folder on the Ipad. You may not go to any other website. 2. You may work together in a SMALL group as long as you do not disrupt your classmates. Honestly, this went much better than I had hoped! : ) Even my most challenging classes stayed on task and enjoyed what they were learning. I'll definitely be using this again! Week 1: Monticello Monticello has a great interactive website. We briefly looked at the biography section and then moved on to the House and Gardens section of the website. The Monticello Explorer offers several different interactive tours of the house and gardens. Explore the Plantation gives a birds eye view of the property and helps to give the students an idea about the amount of land we are talking about and what the land was used for. Explore the House allows you to navigate through a 3D recreation of Monticello. There are also 3 Virtual Tours that have video of the actual house and gardens with narration of how each room and garden was used. A popular feature that was revisited during the 2 weeks of self guided learning was the House Builder. It allowed the students to build their own house making choices about building materials and giving reasons for each choice given such as cost, time to build, ect. Week 2: Mount Vernon This week was very similar to the 1st week. We explored the Mount Vernon website together as a class. It also has some great interactive features. The Virtual Tour allows you to explore each room of the house at your own pace. It has a photo of each room with information about the room, its furniture and purpose as well as stories about George Washington that might center around that room. The Mansion Room by Room Tour gives you the layout of the house by floor. It has pictures and a brief description of each room.
Week 3: Presidential Libraries I started this week by going over the guidelines for individual/small group learning. I had a folder on each ipad with bookmarks to each website and had a list of links on the library homepage for use on the computers. Some of the websites and virtual tours were not compatible with the Ipads so the desktop computers had to be used for those particular websites. The kids did a great job following directions and staying on task! John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Interactive Exhibits White House Diary: This exhibit allows you to look through the President's calendar that includes photos, videos, and/or audio of the events of that day. Virtual Museum Tour The President's Desk We Choose The Moon : This interactive exhibit allows you to follow along with the moon landing minute by minute with photos and audio. Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum *I visited the Reagan Library and Museum several years ago when I visited Southern California and knew I wanted to include it in this unit. I showed the kids several pictures of my visit and they loved trying to find those same spots in the Virtual Tour and the Video Tour. Air Force One Pavilion: The Reagan Museum has the actual Air Force One that the Reagans used during their years in the White House. The kids loved this! Video Tour Oval Office Virtual Tour: When you click on the Google photo it allows you to use your arrow keys to navigate through the museum. This was very popular with the kids probably because it was similar to playing a game on the computer!
*Originally posted November 12, 2014* This has been my favorite unit....EVER! A couple of years ago I was doing a unit on different genres and read a "Little House" book to the kindergarteners for the historical fiction lesson. The kids really got into it and we ended up talking more about it the next week. I had intended to come back and do a bigger unit at some point and it just never happened. Then I found this Little House Virtual Field Trip pin on Pintrest and couldn't wait to put together a unit! The website has the "field trip" broken down into stops. It includes maps, videos, and links to other information for each stop. It also lists the "Little House" chapter books that were written about each stop. Because I was teaching this unit to 1st graders I also found the "My First Little House" picture books that corresponded to each stop as well. Week 1: Stop 1: Pepin, Wisconsin Chapter Book: Little House in the Big Woods Picture Books:
Week3: Stop 3: Walnut Grove, Minnesota Chapter Book: On the Banks of Plum Creek Stop 4: DeSmet, South Dakota Chapter Books:
*The Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum has a few online exhibits that contain photographs of the family and of their lives. We browsed through this site while making our butter. Ingalls Homestead Step 4: It will separate into butter and buttermilk. I poured the buttermilk into another jar. Week 4:
Stop 5: Malone, New York Chapter Book: Farmer Boy Picture Books:
This week was our final stop on our virtual field trip. 1st Grade and I were both a little sad to see it come to an end. They learned so much and I hope had some fun along the way! Here are some of their thoughts on our time with the Ingalls Family: *They get a bucket of water to wash their clothes. That sounds kinda fun. * I learned that Laura didn't have cars, trucks, and airplanes. They used a wagon with horses to take them places. *They had a school with only one class and we have a lot of classes.*Pa played the fiddle. It looks like a really little guitar with a stick. *They had to make their own toys because they didn't have Walmart. *They had a bonnet to keep shade on their heads. *I didn't know that they didn't have grocery stores. They had to plant their own food. *They had to make their house out of trees. *They had to make their own butter out of milk in a butter churner. |
AuthorI am an elementary educator in Birmingham, AL. I have previously taught preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. I now have the BEST job as an elementary school librarian or "The Library Lady" as I'm called by the kindergartners! Archives
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