Transforming experience into poetry: The role of field trips in developing writing skills

The low level of poetry writing skills among elementary school students is a problem influenced by a lack of interest, motivation, and limited imagination and vocabulary. In addition, conventional teaching methods make it difficult for students to express their ideas and choose appropriate words. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the field trip method on elementary school students’ poetry writing skills. This study employed an experimental method with a pre-experimental design, specifically a one-group pretest–posttest design. The participants consisted of 36 students. Data were collected through a pre-test and a post-test, while data analysis was conducted using descriptive and inferential statistics with a paired sample t-test. The results showed an improvement in students’ poetry writing skills after the implementation of the field trip method, with the average pre-test score of 62.28 increasing to 76.79 in the post-test. The hypothesis testing results indicated a significance value of 0.000 < 0.05, which means that the field trip method has a significant effect on students’ poetry writing skills. In addition, the N-gain analysis showed that the improvement fell into moderate and high categories. In conclusion, the field trip method is effective in improving poetry writing skills, as it provides direct learning experiences, enriches students’ vocabulary, and stimulates their creativity and imagination, enabling them to write poetry more expressively.