Field Trips
Field Trips
When classrooms leave the school and come to a field trip at The Telling Room's downtown Portland writing center, students join us for a morning of creative activity, expression and get the full experience of working as writers with their classmates and teachers! At the end of the trip, each writer departs with their own creation and the kind of skills that bolster performance in school, across all disciplines.
And did we mention we have fun?
Our Field Trip curricula are geared toward learners of all ages and abilities. These programs are designed to foster young writers—those who already love writing and those who come to it more reluctantly—so that all participants can benefit equally.
We have a variety of creative field trip models to choose from for any age and group size. Teachers and schools who want to customize their field trip experience can reach out and we'll do our best to create a special experience together. While we are always happy to have groups visit for a single morning, all of our field trips work better in two sessions. We encourage anyone interested to contact us to talk more about extending the learning that happens on a field trip, either with another trip to us or a visit from one of our teaching artists in your classroom.
Field Trip Models
Before contacting us to make a reservation, please read through our field trip curriculum models. We can also work with you to develop your own customized program. Telling Room field trips all take place at our writing center at 225 Commercial Street, in Portland, and run three hours.
Please note that while we are always happy to have groups visit for a single morning, many of our field trips work well with a follow up session. The Vox Pop Audio Field Trip requires at least two sessions. In addition, we are happy to talk with you about ways to extend the learning that happens at our studio.
Writing & Photography
Our Writing & Photography Field Trip takes full advantage of The Telling Room’s colorful Old Port surroundings. Digital cameras (provided) help students find and focus on the most intriguing details of the neighborhood. Using the photographer’s tools of observation and capture, students learn to frame stories and discover that it is the crispness and quality of even the tiniest details that bring a story to life.
Students start this program by discussing how photographers shoot with intention, composing images deliberately. Together we consider a series of artistic photographs, looking at light and shadow, composition, and perspective. Then, we head out into the neighborhood’s wharves, cobblestone streets, and alleyways to see what images catch our attention. Back in the studio, we set to work unpacking the stories that we captured, marrying images to words, whether poetry or narrative. Students leave this field trip with a piece of writing in progress and lasting images of their adventure along Portland’s working waterfront.
Writing & Photography Field Trips are best for older, more experienced writers, grades 6 and up.
Sensory Writing
This field trip asks students to “write their world” according to the sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes they encounter every day. Because too much thinking can run writing aground, in this workshop, we encourage students to write on impulse.
Using sensory prompts—smelling suddenly strange spices, feeling mysterious objects hidden in black bags, appreciating the color of rich photographs—we warm up our pens and allow our natural storytelling instincts to take over. Students then choose a fragment of their writing to expand on, “finding the heat” in descriptive language. As they develop their ideas into story and verse, they spread out in our studio space to focus and/or confer one-on-one with a teaching artist, volunteer, or member of our staff. This field trip model culminates with a work in progress and a whole group reading.
Our Sensory Writing Field Trip is great for all ages, as well as classes with students of mixed abilities. Because of its pacing and progression from simple list-making to fleshed out draft, it’s equally appropriate for reluctant writers and those who can’t put down their pencils.
The Word Walk
A favorite! On this imaginative field trip, students pound the pavement, bricks, wharves, and cobblestones of the Old Port, their pockets crammed with curious, mischievous, and sometimes brilliant words and phrases on brightly colored slips of paper. In small groups led by Telling Room staff and volunteers, students scatter the papers like breadcrumbs, debating which words should live where: for example, a trash can acquires the phrase, “Take it or leave it,” or a park bench bears the directive, “Get up and dance!”
After their Word Walk, students on this field trip return to The Telling Room to write about their experience, developing a story or poem from the scenes they’ve helped to create. Telling Room teaching artists and volunteers circulate the writing studio to help students find and develop their voices, and at the end of the day encourage everyone to read a favorite line or a whole piece of writing.
The Word Walk is best for slightly more mature writers, grades 4 and up.
From Travelogue to Haiku
Inspired by Japanese writer Basho, this field trip is an active combination of observational journaling, sensory writing, and poetry. Students start by awakening their senses and learning about travelogues before heading out into the Old Port to explore the wharves and cobblestone streets, capturing details and documenting their discoveries in a travelogue. They then return to The Telling Room to learn about the art of haiku and to compose poems inspired by their journal writing.
Our Travelogue to Haiku Field Trip is great for all ages. The mini-lessons taught around sensory writing, observation, and concision can be taken back to the classroom and applied to all genres of writing.
Vox Pop Audio
In our Vox Pop (vox populi, or "voice of the people") Audio Field Trip, students are asked to tune into their sense of hearing, listening for stories in voices and sounds. Students learn what makes a traditional vox pop, listening to and critiquing past Telling Room examples. After learning tips for conducting a successful interview and choosing a central question for the focus of their vox pop, students receive audio recording training and take to the streets of Portland in small groups to seek out the stories of locals and tourists alike. When groups return to the studio, they write and record catchy introductions and conclusions for their audio stories, leaving with those recordings as well as raw interview audio that can be edited together into a finished vox pop.
This field trip is best for students in 6th grade and up and requires at least two sessions of three hours to complete all editing for a final piece.
Humans of Maine (HoME)
As in our Vox Pop Audio Field Trip, in this documentary program students are invited to talk to strangers. These often special encounters are captured in writing and photography inspired by the popular Humans of New York (HoNY) project. Students learn important interview and documentary photography techniques before heading outside in small groups to engage in conversation with people they meet on the streets of the Old Port. They then return to The Telling Room and write a reflective piece about their experience. Compared to vox pop, students dive deeper into story in this field trip, considering visual as well as written narrative. They leave with digital photographs and either a draft or a polished piece.
This field trip is appropriate for students in 6th grade and up and requires a minimum of 3 hours, though we encourage an additional follow-up session either at The Telling Room or back in the classroom.
Build-a-Book
In The Telling Room’s Build-a-Book Field Trip, young writers spend half a day at our Commercial Street studio imagining, writing, illustrating, and “publishing” their very own storybooks. Students start the fictional story, set in a Maine town, as an entire class, lead by Telling Room staff and teaching artists. Through a spirited brainstorming and collaborative writing session using exercises designed to help students map the places where they live, students mine their personal geographies for intriguing characters and potential plots.
Children finish their time with us by writing individual endings to their unique versions of the book, and by creating author biographies and drawing illustrations for their book jackets. We believe that it’s especially important for kids to leave with an actual book they authored, so we print and bind the books on-site.
The Build-a-Book model is perfect for our newest and youngest writers, grades K-3, and beginning to intermediate ELL students.
DID YOU KNOW: Target Field Trip Grants for teachers are a great way to get funding for a Telling Room field trip?
Resources to help fund your field trip may be available through The Maine Arts Commission's Ticket To Ride program, which provides funding to defray the cost of travel for Maine K-12 schools wishing to visit Maine arts-based venues and events as a part of a well-rounded curriculum. Click here to see if your school is eligible.
General Information
We host literary Field Trips on weekday mornings from 9:00 or 9:30 am to 12:00 or 12:30 pm at our writing center at 225 Commercial St. #201, Portland, ME 04101. Our center has a maximum capacity of 25 students, and 4 teachers/chaperones.
Students and teachers should bring their own snacks or lunches and beverages. It’s a great help to us if you also bring napkins/cups. We have tap water available and lunch can be eaten in the writing center. We provide everything else—paper, pencils, pens, computers, cameras, etc.
To schedule a field trip, please email Program Director Nick Whiston.
Field Trip Models
Writing & Photography
Our Writing & Photography Field Trip takes full advantage of The Telling Room’s colorful Old Port surroundings. Digital cameras (provided) help students find and focus on the most intriguing details of the neighborhood. Using the photographer’s tools of observation and capture, students learn to frame stories and discover that it is the crispness and quality of even the tiniest details that bring a story to life.
Students start this program by discussing how photographers shoot with intention, composing images deliberately. Together we consider a series of artistic photographs, looking at light and shadow, composition, and perspective. Then, we head out into the neighborhood’s wharves, cobblestone streets, and alleyways to see what images catch our attention. Back in the studio, we set to work unpacking the stories that we captured, marrying images to words, whether poetry or narrative. Students leave this field trip with a piece of writing in progress and lasting images of their adventure along Portland’s working waterfront.
Writing & Photography Field Trips are best for older, more experienced writers, grades 6 and up.
Sensory Writing
This field trip asks students to “write their world” according to the sights, smells, sounds, textures, and tastes they encounter every day. Because too much thinking can run writing aground, in this workshop, we encourage students to write on impulse.
Using sensory prompts—smelling suddenly strange spices, feeling mysterious objects hidden in black bags, appreciating the color of rich photographs—we warm up our pens and allow our natural storytelling instincts to take over. Students then choose a fragment of their writing to expand on, “finding the heat” in descriptive language. As they develop their ideas into story and verse, they spread out in our studio space to focus and/or confer one-on-one with a teaching artist, volunteer, or member of our staff. This field trip model culminates with a work in progress and a whole group reading.
Our Sensory Writing Field Trip is great for all ages, as well as classes with students of mixed abilities. Because of its pacing and progression from simple list-making to fleshed out draft, it’s equally appropriate for reluctant writers and those who can’t put down their pencils.
The Word Walk
A favorite! On this imaginative field trip, students pound the pavement, bricks, wharves, and cobblestones of the Old Port, their pockets crammed with curious, mischievous, and sometimes brilliant words and phrases on brightly colored slips of paper. In small groups led by Telling Room staff and volunteers, students scatter the papers like breadcrumbs, debating which words should live where: for example, a trash can acquires the phrase, “Take it or leave it,” or a park bench bears the directive, “Get up and dance!”
After their Word Walk, students on this field trip return to The Telling Room to write about their experience, developing a story or poem from the scenes they’ve helped to create. Telling Room teaching artists and volunteers circulate the writing studio to help students find and develop their voices, and at the end of the day encourage everyone to read a favorite line or a whole piece of writing.
The Word Walk is best for slightly more mature writers, grades 4 and up.
From Travelogue to Haiku
Inspired by Japanese writer Basho, this field trip is an active combination of observational journaling, sensory writing, and poetry. Students start by awakening their senses and learning about travelogues before heading out into the Old Port to explore the wharves and cobblestone streets, capturing details and documenting their discoveries in a travelogue. They then return to The Telling Room to learn about the art of haiku and to compose poems inspired by their journal writing.
Our Travelogue to Haiku Field Trip is great for all ages. The mini-lessons taught around sensory writing, observation, and concision can be taken back to the classroom and applied to all genres of writing.
Vox Pop Audio
In our Vox Pop (vox populi, or "voice of the people") Audio Field Trip, students are asked to tune into their sense of hearing, listening for stories in voices and sounds. Students learn what makes a traditional vox pop, listening to and critiquing past Telling Room examples. After learning tips for conducting a successful interview and choosing a central question for the focus of their vox pop, students receive audio recording training and take to the streets of Portland in small groups to seek out the stories of locals and tourists alike. When groups return to the studio, they write and record catchy introductions and conclusions for their audio stories, leaving with those recordings as well as raw interview audio that can be edited together into a finished vox pop.
This field trip is best for students in 6th grade and up and requires at least two sessions of three hours to complete all editing for a final piece.
Humans of Maine (HoME)
As in our Vox Pop Audio Field Trip, in this documentary program students are invited to talk to strangers. These often special encounters are captured in writing and photography inspired by the popular Humans of New York (HoNY) project. Students learn important interview and documentary photography techniques before heading outside in small groups to engage in conversation with people they meet on the streets of the Old Port. They then return to The Telling Room and write a reflective piece about their experience. Compared to vox pop, students dive deeper into story in this field trip, considering visual as well as written narrative. They leave with digital photographs and either a draft or a polished piece.
This field trip is appropriate for students in 6th grade and up and requires a minimum of 3 hours, though we encourage an additional follow-up session either at The Telling Room or back in the classroom.
Build-a-Book
In The Telling Room’s Build-a-Book Field Trip, young writers spend half a day at our Commercial Street studio imagining, writing, illustrating, and “publishing” their very own storybooks. Students start the fictional story, set in a Maine town, as an entire class, lead by Telling Room staff and teaching artists. Through a spirited brainstorming and collaborative writing session using exercises designed to help students map the places where they live, students mine their personal geographies for intriguing characters and potential plots.
Children finish their time with us by writing individual endings to their unique versions of the book, and by creating author biographies and drawing illustrations for their book jackets. We believe that it’s especially important for kids to leave with an actual book they authored, so we print and bind the books on-site.
The Build-a-Book model is perfect for our newest and youngest writers, grades K-3, and beginning to intermediate ELL students.
See one that looks just right? Get in touch!
Rates
The rate for a single class (max. 25 students) to come to The Telling Room for a Field Trip is $400, not including transportation. The rate for multiple classes to come from one school is negotiable, and we may not be able to accommodate all classes due to the popularity of this program.
Directions
Click here for directions to The Telling Room.
Reservations
Field Trips typically run on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Reservation exceptions can be made for Thursdays or Fridays as necessary but are not guaranteed.
Please try to reserve your trip or visit several months in advance, as field trips are among our most popular programs and book up quickly.