How it works
These field trip writing prompts follow the day in order, so a class can write before the bus comes and after it returns. None names a real place: they fit a museum, a farm or a bakery up the street.
Read the full guide
A field trip writing prompt for the day before
Writing first gives the visit something to check. Predict the best part, the dull part and the part nobody planned, then seal the page in an envelope. Or list what you know about the place beside what you only think you know, and move the lines once you have seen it.
The thank-you letter after a field trip
Fifteen prompts end the trip with a letter. The receivers vary: the guide, the grown-up who came along to help, whoever opened early, the classmate who was your partner, the place itself. One reply comes back, too, written as the guide.
- Write the same day if you can. By tomorrow the smell of the place is gone.
- A report can skip the bus. A story should not: that is where the talking happens.
Questions and answers
What is a good field trip writing prompt?
A small one. Write about the one thing from the field trip you would go back to see again. Or: what did you see that was not part of the tour?
What do you write in a thank-you letter after a field trip?
Say thank you in the opening sentence, then name one thing you saw and one thing you learned, and sign it. Two details nobody could guess do more than It was fun.
What can students write before a field trip?
Questions and guesses. Five questions to take along, one for each finger of one hand. The rules as the class would write them. A map in words of a place nobody has seen yet.
How do you write a field trip report?
Start with where the class went and why. Give the day in order, slow down at the one thing worth describing closely, and end with a question you still have. One prompt sets it out as a newspaper story.