Field Trip Opportunities-Where do you take your students?

I feel very lucky to both live/teach in the Cincinnati area because there are so many opportunities offered to teachers and students to enhance what is being taught inside of the classroom, outside.

Our Cincinnati Arts Association http://cincinnatiarts.org/education offers a number of invaluable performing arts presentations to students each year.  I submitted a grant for this coming school year back in June and learned today that we have been approved for a grant.  This grant minimizes ticket cost for our students and covers the cost of our transportation in order for our 6th graders to attend this play.  For just $2 a ticket, our students have the chance to experience the performing arts-kind of exciting.

Here is the play we will be attending:

Accidental Friends

By Y York

Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park

Aronoff Center, Jarson-Kaplan Theater

This funny but moving play tells the story of Jonathan, who is temporarily blinded by a head injury. He sits alone wondering why his best friends don't come see him. Enter Hilda, a classic over-achiever geek, wondering why Jonathan hasn't answered the witty letter she was made to write in class. With Hilda's relentless encouragement, Jonathan learns to get around using his sense of touch. He also discovers that although Hilda may be unusual, she is also interesting and funny. Nonetheless, when Jonathan gets back to school and his friends, he turns his back on her. Only when it is too late does Jonathan realize that he can help Hilda by being her friend.

I will be reading the novel Crash by Jerry Spinelli with my students in the fall of the school year.  http://mrsbeerslanguageartsclass.blogspot.com/p/books-books-and-more-books.html The novel and this play present a text-text connection for my students as characters go through trials and tribulations in order to determine true friendships.

While my hope is that my students view this play and are able to make this literary connection, I am more thrilled that they have the opportunity to experience the arts.  Even more exciting would be a student deciding that upon seeing this performance, they can't wait to try out for the school play in middle school!

So check out what learning opportunities outside of the classroom your town or city has to offer-you never know how cheap in cost an opportunity may come, but how rich an experience your students will have.