Grade Level Trips

Each year, each grade level takes a two or three night trip.  These trips afford our students the opportunity to develop stronger relationships with one another, greater understandings of themselves and their environment, and more pertinent connections between what they learn in the classroom and the real world.  These trips serve as centerpieces to the curriculum for each of the participating grade levels during the first part of the year as students engage in related art projects, study the cultures of the region, read literature with similar themes or settings, and focus their science explorations in these settings. 

The fifth graders attend the Barrier Island Environmental Program on Seabrook Island.  This marine science experience takes place among over 200 acres of undeveloped maritime forest and salt marsh with a mile of beachfront.  This trip serves as a perfect extension of the fifth grade science coastal ecology unit and allows them to develop a stronger understanding of the Geechee-Gullah culture of the South Carolina barrier islands. 

The sixth graders travel to the Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown.  This trip is designed to help students understand the life in the colonies—a major unit during the first semester of their history course.  This trip includes interactive experiences with colonial medicine, crafts, government, economics, and the revolutionary war.  We even take a tour of the hauntings of the area. 

The seventh graders participate in the Green River Preserve’s “Little Tree Program.”  This experience in cultural heritage, ecological respect, and interconnection provides students with a foundation for their study of life and environmental science, an appreciation for the Native American cultures they have examined in American History, and a focal point for their community service efforts involving the community garden and environmental issues.   

The eighth graders travel to Washington, DC to tour many of the national monuments, memorials, and artifacts that mark this country’s history.  Having completed a two-year study of American History in sixth and seventh grades, this trip serves as a capstone experience for these students.  In addition, this tour provides students with a comparative basis for their examination of world cultures during the eighth grade year.  Through this experience and others, it is our hope that students would begin to understand concepts of justice, equity, service and duty and be inspired to become actors in their community.