Field Trips and Special Projects for Educators
Field Trips and Special Projects for Educators
Science festival opportunities for educators
The Wisconsin Science Festival is for everyone, especially teachers, who inspire curiosity in the youth they work with every day. Explore the many ways to connect elementary, middle and high school classes with the incredible science happening across Wisconsin. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay informed about future opportunities.
Virtual Field Trips
During the week of the Wisconsin Science Festival, groups are able to register to join a selection of virtual field trip opportunities. Descriptions of the 2024 sessions can be found here. Recordings of the 2024 virtual sessions can be enjoyed on our YouTube channel.
Descriptions and registration for the 2025 Wisconsin Science Festival virtual field trip experiences will be available in Summer, 2025.
Discovery Building Hands-on Expo
Discover dozens of interactive hands-on stations that cover a wide range of topics from engineering to biology and much more. Exploration stations are open-ended and mostly drop-in experiences. Explore at your own pace and let students spend as much time as they want at each station. There are activities for all grade levels. You will have the option to indicate interest in joining hands-on workshops and shows during the expo or visiting other Wisconsin Science Festival sites on UW-Madison’s campus.
Check out all the 2024 field trip add-on experiences here!
The 2025 Wisconsin Science Festival Discovery Expo field trip registration will open in late spring, 2025.
How It’s Made in Wisconsin Project
This year-round program is seeking school groups, community organizations and 4-H programs of all sizes to discover a unique “behind-the-scenes” perspective of Wisconsin-made products via facility tours, demonstrations or open house opportunities as part of the Wisconsin Science Festival.
BioBlitz: Connect with Wisconsin’s Biodiversity
The Wisconsin Science Festival is working with partners throughout the state to organize BioBlitzes. These easy-to-customize events focus on identifying as many species as possible within a certain niche, from forests to your school playground.
It’s easy to do, and we can help!
Water: A Statewide Inquiry Experience
The Wisconsin Science Festival partners with the Wisconsin Society of Science Teachers and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s “Reimagine the Science Fair” project to create the Statewide Science Experience. Join with your colleagues to take part in a project designed to fill every school to the last drop with water education!
This multiyear effort encourages teachers to use and share science lessons related to water. It includes a core lesson for students to investigate water runoff in school parking lots and visualize the data throughout the year. Educators can connect to water education projects organized by grade level and WSS/NGSS alignment.
For more information about this effort, contact info@wiscifest.org.
Meet the Lab
Meet the Lab is a collection of educational resources for middle school science classrooms that introduces learners to relevant real-world issues, cutting edge research and the human element—the people working together to research, innovate and solve problems using science. Click here to learn more, or reach out to us if you’d like to connect with any of these labs.
“The topics were great this year! My students had several favorites! The off-site visit to the art museum was a great experience for our rural students, as many of them had never been to a museum before.”
“We just loved the virtual field trip of both BioBlitz and the human brain. The brain hats were a huge hit!! Students were very engaged. Thanks again for this opportunity.”
“Variety of topics, minimal people, not a lot of wait time for stations, lots of hands-on for students. Extra field trips were wonderfully planned with great communication beforehand.”
Gallery and banner images by Ueda Photography
