School trips are a great educational experience that transcends the four walls of the classroom. A school trip offers students the chance to continue learning and growing as a person while living a great adventure and socializing with their classmates. There is certainly no better opportunity to work on group cohesion in your class.
Whether it’s a day trip, an end-of-term school trip, or a whole weekend, group unity will be one of the great rewards for the teacher and all the students. School tourism has a lot to offer to the education of students.
What group school trips bring to the classroom
Let’s see some more benefits that these school trips bring to the students and the entire class that participates in them.
Practical learning based on experience
This is undoubtedly one of the great benefits: being able to continue learning through practice and experience. If the trips are cultural or historical, even better. School trips can be to museums, natural environments, science centers, historical places, and so on.
Promotes responsibility and independence
On a school trip, students have the opportunity to develop essential independence skills nowadays. They also work on responsibility: taking care of the group, watching their things, respecting schedules, and making good decisions. A good educational experience leads to a more responsible personality.
Work on teamwork and social interaction.
School trips involve groups of students who must interact and work together. This promotes the development of social skills and teamwork. Students learn to communicate effectively, resolve conflicts, and collaborate to achieve common goals.
This is particularly interesting for end-of-year trips, for example. Especially if you choose to organize it from the beginning of the course, it will encourage them to cooperate more, get excited, and get involved in their preparation.
Expand your worldview
Whether the trip is to a natural environment or to visit other countries or cultures or places of interest, it will always be an experience that will make the young person broaden their general vision of the world and expand their social and knowledge boundaries.
Inspire interest
Students are searching for themselves: their personality, their vocations, their dreams. A school trip can be a real inspiration for them. Discovering what motivates them in life and what they want to become can be discovered on a trip to the right place.
How to organize school trips
One of the big questions that all teachers and school principals ask themselves is how to organize school trips from the beginning of the school year.
We are going to give you a simple guide with practical tips.
Set the objectives
It is about being clear about the meaning and objectives of school trips throughout the course in the educational plan and in the learning or socialization objectives of the group.
Select destinations
Once you have a clear objective, the next step is to choose the destinations you want to go to as a group. This will depend on whether the objective is educational or has more to do with fun and the unity of the group of students.
Plan the itinerary
Once you have selected your destination, you need to plan your itinerary carefully. The best thing to do is to make a list of places to see with information about schedules, weather, etc. Then organize it based on the number of days that your group trip will last.
At this point, it may be easier to turn to a travel agency specializing in group travel that can better advise and help organize the entire trip.
Managing your travel budget
Then it is a matter of doing the math and calculating the total costs to determine how the funding will be and whether the financial resources can be afforded by the school or the students.
Obtaining parental permissions and authorizations
A key point is to explain the details of the trip to the parents and request their written authorization.
This point is especially essential if the trip is several days long, such as end-of-year trips, for example.
Organize logistics
The logistics aspect is essential to have everything ready. Travel, accommodation, the material that will be needed, etc.
Fluid communication
Communication is important on a group trip with students. Clear information is provided to the participants themselves, as well as to parents or staff who will be taking part in the trip.
Plan for the unexpected.
Nobody wants them to happen, but they do happen. Unforeseen events can happen on a trip. And you do have to try to get ahead of them. Have an emergency plan designed in case something goes wrong and you have to make changes to the itinerary, resort to other resources, etc.
Easy group school trips
As you can see, there are many aspects to take into account when organizing a school trip. That is why it is sometimes advisable to rely on group travel experts who can help you.