What is Postcard Fieldtrip?
This is a curriculum project I share with my students grade k-12 in my small, rural school. I have k-5 students for 30 minutes, twice a week, and so there are books and activities for them. For junior high and high school, I try to make book displays and do book talks regarding books from or about places around the world, attempting to find and focus on books written by people who are from the places we're studying. It is an attempt to bring the world to my students through books and online interactive experiences, shared in our Google Classroom environment. How and why did you start Postcard Field Trip? In March 2020, the world shut down. My already isolated rural community seemed even more isolated than ever. But really it wasn't. Many of my students seldom leave the county, let alone the state or country. So as remote learning moved into summer break. I knew I needed to find a way to connect my students with the world. This is how Postcard Field Trip was born. My first step was to contact as many tourism boards as I could. I attempted to make contact with every US state and territory, as well as each country of the world. I asked for postcards so that I could send postcards FROM the places we were studying to my students while we studied them. I anticipated us being remote for portions of 2020-2021, or moving back and forth between them a lot. This would help us stay connected and be a fun little extra. Many tourism boards were very kind and generous. I share these extras with students. Then I started researching the states and countries of the world. I tried finding books. I researched famous and influential people from all over the world. I tried sketching out a plan to cover the 50 states and territories in one school year. Boy, was I wrong about how much we could get done in a year! My goal now is to get all of my k-5 kids to learn all the states, US territories, and countries of the world during their complete career at the grade school. So what is this website? This is my attempt to share my research and activities with other librarians and teachers who might find it helpful. It is entirely incomplete, but I am working all the time on research, brainstorming, updating this website, etc. I teach this information every day, so I am always making progress on this project in some way. Please feel free to reach out at any time if you find any corrections I need to make, have any suggestions for me, or any questions. I am happy to email with you! nfolkman at hartem. org. Would you like to contribute? If you have found this website helpful and would like to thank me in some way, please feel free to donate a book to my school library. Here is an Amazon wishlist of books I've labeled as possible Postcard Field Trip books. Please feel free to buy from whatever bookstore you would like. You can email me to work out the details. nfolkman at hartem. org. Last updated 1.30.22 at 8:42AM
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