Are you looking to liven up your virtual teaching with different experiences? Consider integrating virtual field trips into your instruction, with the possibility for students to respond, collaborate, and wonder. Flipgrid has you covered!
Why Flipgrid for Virtual Field Trips?
Many of the topics compile various links, information, and videos so that you don’t need to pull together these resources – the work is done for you! Many of the Flipgrids also have questions and prompts for student responses, which you could either edit or leave as is. With a built-in Immersive Reader function via Microsoft, the text within Flipgrid automatically reads aloud to students when they click the volume icon, making these experiences accessible. Learn more about this function within Flipgrid here.
Another benefit of using Flipgrid is the ability for students to see and respond to one another’s posts! This makes the learning collaborative and can open up other lines of inquiry that students may have. Rather than students sharing their work with their teacher, they are also sharing with their classmates, similar to how they would when in-person. In turn, students respond to one another and are able to push each other’s thinking with another question, a comment, or a suggestion.
About Flipgrid Virtual Field Trips
Once logged into your Flipgrid Educator dashboard, the “Discovery” tab is where you will find the virtual field trips offered. Flipgrid has partnered with other organizations to offer a library of virtual “field trips” and experiences that students can explore together – these experiences work across content area and topic. Since March is Women’s History Month, there is a special collection that has topics from various content partners. Take a look at the collection here!
Other content partner favorites include: The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, Polar Bears International, Scholastic, and Wonderopolis! Wonderopolis offers a great format for integrating a “wonder of the day” into your curriculum.
As a teacher, you can select which of the Flipgrid partner experiences you’d like to integrate into your classroom, and then simply copy it over to an assignment for your specific students. Flipgrid is perfect for hybrid, remote, and concurrent teaching as it offers the ability for students to collaborate asynchronously.
- The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee – Students can watch videos of elephants who call the sanctuary home, and read the biography of each elephant. Students then can use Flipgrid to share what they’ve learned about the elephant that they researched – consider using a jigsaw format so that students research different elephants and then compare them. This would work well as a precursor to information writing!
- Polar Bears International – Students can explore various topics, such as “Polar Bear Safety” and “Polar Bear Tracking,” as well read about how climate change is impacting Polar Bears. Students interact with information via websites and watch short videos before reflecting on what they have learned and what they still wonder.
- Wonderopolis – Wonderopolis has a bank of Flipgrid activities centered on questions and wonderings. Each topic includes an article from Wonderopolis, and a similar video where students can explore a central question and respond within the Flipgrid assignment. Consider integrating a “wonder of the day/week” into your teaching!
- Scholastic – For literacy connections, consider Flipgrid for mini author studies! Students can learn how to draw graphics with Dav Pilkey, plot comics with Kazu Kibuishi, or draw emotions with Shannon Wright! Best of all, students have an authentic audience with whom to share their creations with, each other!
If you want to assign one of these topics, you can either add it to a larger grid (in Flipgrid, your “grid” is your class) or you can add it as a stand-alone topic. This makes a copy of the specific topic for use and customization in your own class. Students can then begin collaborating with you as the teacher, as well as their classmates to explore issues connected to content!
Flipgrid Access
Integrating Flipgrid into your teaching is simple, because it falls under our “Microsoft” umbrella! When you have set up a grid for your students, you will be prompted to add their student email address. From there, students simply need to log in with their Microsoft credentials to access the class. Flipgrid is a simple add-in for Teams, if you are using that as part of your classroom platform.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to your Ed Tech Lead or TOSA if you want support integrating Flipgrid into your teaching!
For more information on getting started with Flipgrid, click here!
