Acadia National Park

Help your class connect granite mountains, Atlantic tides, Wabanaki homeland, and designed landscapes in Acadia National Park

This virtual field trip helps grades 6–12 understand Acadia National Park as a connected Atlantic landscape shaped by granite, ice, tides, freshwater, Wabanaki homeland, transportation design, and public-land decisions. Students move from broad geographic scale to evidence they can examine in one cove, inlet, lake, museum landscape, bridge, or peninsula.

The seven-stop route begins on Cadillac Mountain, then visits Sand Beach, Thunder Hole, Jordan Pond, Sieur de Monts, Duck Brook Bridge, and Schoodic Point. Each place has a separate teaching job, so recurring processes such as glaciation or erosion return only when a new location adds a different mechanism, scale, consequence, or visible clue.

Designed for grades 6–12. Middle school classes can emphasize landforms, watersheds, cultural continuity, and engineering; high school classes can extend the discussion into differential erosion, interpretation, public-land access, and relationships among scientific and cultural evidence.

At each stop, students explore Google Maps, use the photo panel or gallery when another angle is useful, listen to a short narration, follow the transcript when needed, and discuss evidence from the visible place. Plan about 35–55 minutes with map exploration, gallery viewing, and discussion pauses.

Try the free preview of Stop 1 (Cadillac Mountain) to see the format with your students. When the full lesson is published, purchase will provide an unlock code and shareable student access. Printable teaching materials can be delivered separately from the online trip through the product purchase.