Preparing students for an active role in an IVC Fieldtrip

I know that I will have to prepare not only my class but also my co-teacher's 1st grade class. I think that for our specific program that I will teach my class and get some info to her class about habitats. We may even go looking for habitats around our school. I want to make this as educational as possible so I will need to really get both classes prepared with a base of what a habitat is. We can talk about our homes as habitats. We can even make model habitats. We can talk about what makes a habitat nice and what would be not nice to have in a habitat. I also know that I will have to prepare my students to communicate over the system. I have already had a classroom connect with mine so my students have seen the process but I am worried about the communication abilities of my students. We will see with the first one and go one from there. I will have a set of questions ready and maybe we will role play the situation. Depending on availability I may have both classes connect with my special ed class again.