fiEldwORk pAckagE!!! ^_^

Karen, Tingfang, Cheepeng, Michelle and I did our Sentosa field trip package on Tourism and it was fun! :)

What do you intend the students to learn?
We intend for the students to experience and see the positive and negative implications of tourism development in Sentosa through the planned, station activities on the island.

How did u transform the big ideas?
We discussed at length and decided that our big Idea will be that "tourism shapes the sociocultural and physical landscape of a destination". We hope that through the stations (at palawan beach, siloso beach and the MErlion) and activities (like Beach profile sketching, secondary-data collection tourists from interviewing and completing of activity sheets), students will gain a better firsthand experience and understanding of the impacts of tourism in Singapore's context.

How did the events of the lesson unfold?
Students will be briefed before the fieldtrip and they will have a pre-field trip activity to "whet" their appetite and prepare themselves for the fieldtrip!
For the fieldtrip proper, 10 students are allocated into each group with a teacher facilitating the activities and they will move from station to station and complete some exciting activities at each station before moving on. There are 3 stations in all with various activities.
They are each given a fieldtrip booklet to complete and a post-fieldtrip group activity to conclude and wrap up the entire fieldtrip package. :)

How did u make sense of lesson delivery?
The lesson starts from the pre-field trip activity in class, to the fieldtrip proper that takes place outdoors at Sentosa with the facilitation of other teachers during and between the stations, followed by the concluding post activity in class and the completion of the booklet, which will act as a form of assessment of the student's learning progress and an evaluation of the effectiveness of the package.

What did you learn from the experience?
I learnt that planning fieldtrips may be fun but can be quite tedious in terms of planning because the learning takes place outdoors, with many uncontrollable factors, we have to consider and look into many other administrative aspects such as a wet-weather program, safety issues, indemnity forms, transportation and food, and receeing issues to plan for the actual fieldtrip itself. Nonetheless, the experience can be quite enriching and fulfilling despite the amount of effort needed.

Does the experience teach others?
well.. not really but we can share these ideas with the rest of the class so that we can make use of these resources in the future? We did, however, learn from each other in the process of planning though and it was really fun! :)

What does it teach you about student learning?

It taught me that such activities can be a very fun, experiential and practical way of engaging students in the learning of geographical concepts and ideas and applying them into reality. Speaking as a student myself, I, indeed learn better with such hands-on activities and these programs not only engages students but also generates interest in the subject itself! :) Looking back, I really enjoyed all my past fieldtrips even the last short but exciting one to bukit timah nature reserve with Mr Yee! Somehow all the textbook knowledge just comes to life and it's amazing how much we can reap from Mr Yee's vast experience and knowledge! ^_^