When I was visiting the Museum of Science in Boston, I was in the Natural Mysteries exhibit when a group of boys – probably 4th or 5th grade – on a field trip came in and began running around, being loud, banging on exhibits, and horsing around. With them were two chaperones whose main concern seemed to be getting their children to pose for a photo. Maybe you too have experienced this on a museum visit, or perhaps you’ve been a chaperone on a field trip to a museum.
Should there be some kind of expectation for the behavior of students in a museum, even one as hands-on and stimulating as the Museum of Science? Is it the responsibility of chaperones or the teachers? Should teachers give the students an assignment that keeps them focused on something related to the school curriculum? Or is a museum a place for more informal learning, where kids can and should be able to get away from studying things that are going to be on the end-of-year test?
Feel free to leave me a comment on this blog.
So here are a few more of the great exhibits I saw on my trip to the Museum of Science.
· Natural Mysteries is filled with all sorts of terrific stuff, including a large and diverse collection of animals, rocks, and shells that kids can observe and explore. In fact, there’s far too much in just this one exhibit for me to describe or discuss all of the great things young children can learn. So, let me focus on the main theme here, which is classification/sorting. There are lots of activities that teach children about sorting – sometimes you have to sort items yourself, other times you have to figure out how the items have already been sorted. As you can imagine, this is a terrific way to learn how children think and what they understand about the concept of sorting. Did they put the shells into groups by size? Color? Or maybe a more distinctive way, like the pattern on the shells or how they feel? Can the kids explain what they did? Discuss it with them and get insight into their mind! Sorting and classification are important concepts as kids go through the early years of school – not only for math, but also science (classifying animals, plants, living/nonliving, food groups), reading comprehension, and critical thinking.
o This exhibit also has a station called “Make Your Own Museum” where you’ll find a variety of objects. Children can create a display from objects provided by the museum and write about it. I really liked this project because it encourages young visitors to think about how and why museums make the decisions they do when creating displays of collections, like in ‘Natural Mysteries."
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| "Make Your Own Museum" at Natural Mysteries |
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o The museum extends this idea of collections even further. Just outside of this exhibit space, you’ll also find a display box full of the personal collections of people from the museum. The collections rotate, but when I was there they included signed baseballs, Pez dispensers, and pressed pennies from all different places and attractions. Let’s face it – almost all of us collect something. I think the least embarrassing thing that I collect is postcards from my travels. I’m sure your child already collects something – dolls, baseball cards, snow globes. I think it would be a great idea to encourage your child to create a display using toys, stuffed animals, favorite books, etc. This is also a great opportunity for your child to think about why these things are meaningful, decide the best way to arrange these items, and to write a label. Get creative too – maybe do good guys vs. bad guys, arrange the stuffed animals so that they’re at a tea party, or make a series of clever scenes with props.
Then take a photo of your child’s display and post it to this blog!
o If children want to see other collections or even show off their own, there is a British website where kids can join and post photos of their collections. Check it out at http://www.caboodle.org.uk/home.
o And for some great books about collections, check out the dozens of I Spy and Can You See What I See? books that are available.
· The last of the exhibits at the Museum of Science that I wanted to focus on is the first floor’s New England Habitats. This contains dioramas of mounted animals in various New England areas, set during different seasons. In some ways these 3-D displays are very old-fashioned, showing frozen animals in a scene designed to give you a feel for their natural environment, including background paintings done by famous wildlife artist Francis Lee Jacques.
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| New England Habitats |
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But I think they’re fantastic. They beautifully capture a moment in time and they’re staged so that it feels almost natural to create a story in your head about what’s happening and why. As a result, I think they’re great as teaching tools since kids can make observations about what they see, draw conclusions about animal behavior, and notice the signs of the different seasons depicted. There are so many questions you can ask to get children noticing and thinking about what they observe, and it may even inspire them to go out and see the real thing!
You will also find lots of books out there about the animals in this exhibit and about the seasons, but here are a few that I like:
o Blueberries for Sal, by Robert McCloskey. Although McCloskey is best known for the classic, Make Way for Ducklings, he also wrote this 1949 Caldecott Honor Book about the adventures of a little girl and a bear both in search of blueberries.
o Pretty much any book by Jim Arnofsky. This author/illustrator does a great job of creating books filled with detailed illustrations and simple text about animals and the natural world. Some of his books are Every Autumn Comes the Bear, Beaver Pond, Moose Pond, and All Night Near the Water.
o There also some good books in the Smithsonian Wild Heritage Collection, such as Black Bear Cub and Beaver Stream.
That's definitely a good question about behavioral expectations. I'm all about the museum being a place for informal learning, but I think there should certainly be some level of control. It is a public space, so the kids really should be expected to behave in a socially-appropriate way. That said, teachers should try to plan their lessons in the museum so that they capitalize on the informal (and often hands-on) environment. The kids should have fun while learning, but not be so rambunctious that it takes away from the experience of those who are not affiliated with them.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about how teachers should plan lessons that take advantage of the type of learning that are museums’ strength. I think there is so much pressure nowadays on teachers to focus field trips on meeting state curriculum standards that they try to force students to do school-like tasks that clash with the informal learning that museums lend themselves to. The result may well be that children see museums as just another place to complete school assignments, and not as a special place where they can become engaged in the collections and learning that museums have to offer. Then they’re just looking for any opportunity to blow off steam they can find, even if it means running around and playing.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree that regardless, there can and should be behavioral expectations for a public place like a museum. Perhaps a place like the Museum of Science, because it has so many hands-on areas where noise and boisterous behavior are expected, makes it hard for children to know where in the museum such conduct is appropriate and where it’s not. Maybe the students I saw wouldn’t have acted that way in a quieter, more sedate museum because the overall expectations for that type of space are different.