The fieldtrip is a great opportunity to support classroom learning with real world experience. It’s also a great way to bring together threads of learning from different subjects and firmly establish these ‘cross-curricular links’ by experiencing them at work in a new and interesting context.

Field work skills are a key component of geography and science, dealing with data is a key part of the maths curriculum and reading and writing are an inevitable part of any kind of survey. In fact, it would be unusual if these subjects didn’t overlap and a recent visit to a zoo was a great opportunity to put some of the children’s skills to work.

They immediately had the chance to apply some of their geography skills as they tried to navigate, with the help of the map provided by the zoo. The children’s reading skills were also put to use deciphering signs and identifying animals. However, their main task while at the zoo, was to use their scientific knowledge to classify the animals they saw, as mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian or fish and this gave rise to some lively debate over which animal belonged in which group and why.

When the children returned to the classroom, they looked at their field survey notes to analyse the data; mammals were the most numerous, closely followed by birds (but it was definitely the reptiles that fascinated!). The next task was for the children to use their writing skills to recount the highlights of the day in words and pictures for others to enjoy and while some were busy with that, others used their ICT skills to produce posters showing the life cycle of the crocodiles they had seen at the zoo.

The intention is that days out like this will encourage the children to see the relevance and interconnectedness of everything they learn in school and spur them on to achieve their best across the whole curriculum even in subjects which are perhaps not their strongest or their favourite. Generally speaking, the signs are that it really does seem to work.