You may remember me mentioning that my new library is on the smaller side. Although, come to think of it, we have managed to have several classes in here over the past months, and the students do love the soft seating I’ve acquired. But I digress.
In light of the eighth grade students starting their National History Day projects, I decided that a field trip to the upper school library was in order. Since the upper school is on a separate campus, this is a complicated undertaking, indeed. But, I decided to go for it.
Here’s my to-do list in case you were interested in organizing a library-based field trip.
- Get teacher buy-in. I needed to have teacher support in order to even start the process since this would require curriculum time.
- Get administration approval. There was no point in moving forward if I couldn’t get permission to drastically affect the daily schedule for an entire grade over the course of two days. I made sure to stress why it was a unique research experience for the students as well as a great opportunity to become familiar with the upper school campus and resources.
- Check the schedule for the other library to ensure the availability of the space and librarian. (I love being part of a team!)
- Arrange for transportation. Since my school has buses available, I didn’t have to reserve with a separate company, but I still needed to get our trips on the schedule.
- Once details were in place, communicate with administration, teachers, transportation contact, and fellow librarian.
- Create schedule and lesson to accommodate for learning and research time.
- Confirm the details on the regular in case anything funny comes up (it always does) and revise as needed.
- Have lots of caffeine.
All in all, the field trips went off without major hitches. As usual, the first class was a rehearsal for the next two days. I always say that by the last class we will have all the details ironed out. (Lol)
Since I now have a “playbook” for organizing field trips, I’m going to look into taking over other classes to the main campus as well as trying to arrange for my students to visit a local college campus to seeing its library and resources! Fingers crossed.