An educational school trip to students is something exciting to students but a huge concern to teachers and the supervisors who are in charge of safety for children. Although we all know that a field trip can give students a delightful experience, sometimes it includes safety risks. While exploring the field trip, students may get lost, expose to dangers or be injured. Each objective, subjective elements in unexpected situations could threaten the safety of students. Therefore, well preparation before traveling and quick reaction during the program will contribute to a successful and safe field trip.
Preparation Tips in Advance for School Trips
Talk to Students
The very first rule of each field trip for safety is to disseminate special instructions to students. What to tell them is the importance of staying close to the group. Remind them to observe and follow supervisors and other friends. If that trip was the 1st time for school trips, students can be overexcited, so you should tell them that the trip is time to have fun and relax but they still have to follow the instructions when participating in the field trip. You should educate them to stay alert with strangers and do not receive any gifts from them and stay within your observation. And you have to make sure that children are all clear about the rules and have no objections to those. If you can’t achieve that thing, you won't be able to control them, especially in the chaotic case, which can ruin the whole school tour.
Send Special Before-hand Instructions
There always have unexpected situations during your trip, thus, think about some possible cases that might happen, figure out the ultimate solutions and popularize them to students before trips are necessary. For example, children may get separated from the team while visiting. In this case, if students are let to know the place of meeting after exploring activities finish, they will know where to go to find the group. One thing important is to set a briefing when you reach the destination to tell students the map or the directions of the visiting place. This tip could help students to stay calm and move to the fixed meeting point without guidance from others.
Pack Necessary Supplies
Apart from school things for educational activities, you need to make a list of vital items for field trip day. Your list may include the permission slip, money for the extra cost, sunscreen and the medications. Yes, You’d better well prepare an emergency first-aid kit. The package should have anti-septic crème, bandages, cotton balls, so on. Have a discussion to the school nurse to learn medication for fever, cough, allergies treatment,…This could be timeconsuming and there is a lot of medication notes to learn but it will be helpful for yourselves and students in emergency cases.
Safety Tips During Educational Trips
Stand Out Students by Uniforms
This is such a simple tip but remarkably effective one to recognize students in the crowd. Your supervisors should discuss how to dress the children, it is better for brightly-colored clothes or school uniforms for the field trip. The colors you should avoid are dark ones like brown or black because they won’t make students prominent on your witness. You can think about matching shirts with long sleeves, this kind of clothes will protect students from sunburn and insects. Besides, watching the weather forecast is required to figure out what to dress properly.
Pay Great Attention to Students
In each group, there will have at least one challenging student, who often makes trouble; thus it is not exaggerated to assume that student causes trouble in the coming trips. To address this issue, you should stress the supervisor or chaperone of each group to supervise those students and remember to separate any couple of naughty children into different groups. By using this strategy, you could avoid unwanted troubles from them. Concentration to students also means that you have to be sure accurately the number of students in your witness; thus, do not forget to count the number as many times as possible. Keep track of the children will help you find out missing students at the earliest of the educational trip and find for them.
Let Student Self-control Each Group
For example with a class of more than 40 learners, teachers often meet with difficulty controlling and do not have time to check out each student during the trip. So, why not divide the class into smaller groups and ask them to vote for a team leader, or assign yourselves? The group monitors will work under your general management; they will care for group members and inform the teachers timely any problem. This technique will significantly bring you effectiveness.
Safe Transportation
Another aspect you should take it into consideration is transportation. About this, supervisors and teachers had better spend time choosing the safe mode of transportation; determine which models are suitable for traveling with the number of students; which ones match with the field trip budget. For example, school buses are way more preferable than private cars. In addition, it is important to find drivers who are responsible and responsible.
