Science World Field Trip

By Nadiya Scratchely. Photos by Katharine Zhang.

On November 8th, Alpha’s Grade 8 students took a field trip to Science World, their first field trip of the year! Despite the huge crowd of students, Science World was big enough to fit everyone. The students all met at Alpha to leave at around eight thirty in the morning to take the Skytrain to Science World, and arrived back at school just before the last bell rang. ​

The day of the field trip was on a “Teen Tuesday,” which is a monthly event when Science World only accepts bookings from secondary schools for large groups of students going on field trips. Many other schools attended, and Science World was packed, however the staff did a great job handling all the students. 

“Science World is specifically crafted for large numbers of people. Our staff is trained to facilitate, and we get really excited when we have this many people in. It allows us to really showcase our talents and interact with as many people as possible,”explained Bronwyn McNeill, the customer service manager at Science World.

The exhibitions at Science World were related to the topic that the Grade 8 students were learning in Science. “Right now... we’re studying cells and the way they work,” explained Mila Desbiens, a Grade 8 French Immersion student. The featured exhibition at the time was “Zoom Into Nano,” which was all about nanotechnology and nanobiology. “I learned a lot about nanoscience, like how tall I was in nanometres,” said Amy Ricker. 

For the first half of the day, the students were free to roam Science World, and check out all the fun exhibitions and activities. Then at around 1:00, everyone met up at the entrance of the Omnimax theatre for a 45 minute movie. The students got to see “Voyage of Time”, a film about the way our earth came to be, and it was narrated by none other than Brad Pitt. It was a common opinion that the Omnimax was a cool experience. Kassian Chen said, “I didn’t learn anything from the movie, but the Omnimax experience was cool. I started to feel really sleepy and kinda dizzy though.” 

“It felt cool, it was a good experience,” expressed Evan Matthew Monaco. “The thing I liked most about the whole Science World experience was actually the Omnimax movie. It seemed so real, and it was very visually pleasing.” mentioned Celina Y.

The trip to Science World was as fun for the students as it was tiring for the teachers. Mme. Fretier, the French Immersion Scimatiques teacher, states, “I like field trips because it lets us get out of school and lets us see the outside world. It allows us to interact with students in a different way. But of course, taking a Skytrain with 38 students is stressful, because they are our responsibility, so we can’t lose them. Luckily, I had Mme.Godin to help me out. Either way, I feel like we do field trips a lot less than we should. It takes a lot of organization, but if I had the chance to do more field trips, I would.” 

​Teachers enjoy field trips, and so do students. The school should definitely figure out a way to implement field trips more often. They really do help students get out of a repetitive school environment to help them learn in a whole new way. All in all, this was a successful and educational experience for students and teachers alike.