Plan a Visit
Plan a successful field (study) trip with forethought. These pages provide previsit information and material. Some activities may be adapted for use during and after your visit, too.
Learning from artifacts
It's not quite like reading a textbok. Help your students make the leap to "reading" an artifact. [+]
Before Your Visit
Here's a simple exercise to get your students ready for their museum excursion. Museums tell the story of the past through objects or artifacts made by or used by people in those times. Learning to "read" an artifact is a skill to be acquired through practice just like reading a text.
Select an object that may be unfamiliar to students. It can be anything. The important thing is to teach students how to really look at an object and to use logic to reason out the following:
Five questions to ask about any object:
- What is it? Describe or draw the object. What does it look like, feel like, sound like? How big is it? What is it made from? Does it have a smell or a taste?
- What was it used for?
- Who made the object? Used it? Owned it?
- What is the object's social significance? Why was it chosen for this gallery?
- How has it changed over time? Do we use the same object today? If we no longer use the object, what has taken its place?
Ask students to describe the artifact's physical characteristics and to guess the use of the object both in the present and in the past. Discuss how students developed their ideas about the object.
- Did the student have to touch the object to determine if it was hard or soft?
- Did he or she have to lift it to know if it was heavy or light?
- If not by physically testing the object, then how did they make a judgment? (Prior knowledge of the characteristics of similar objects allows us to make predictions about new objects.)
At the Museum
In each gallery, select a student to choose an artifact and tell about it using the above five questions (repeat throughout your visit to give each student an opportunity). Or, to make a game of it, ask the students to describe the artifact (using the five questions) without naming it. Other class members should wait until the description is finished, then guess the object described. Before moving on to the next exhibit or gallery, discuss why the artifacts described are displayed in their setting: how do they relate to each other? (historical time period, similar art style, related use, etc.)
Guess the Artifact
Practice what you saw in "Learning from Artifacts" with this activity. [+]
Museums tell the story of the past through the objects or artifacts used by people in those times. Learning to "read" an artifact is a skill to be acquired through practice just like reading a text.
Discuss how students developed their ideas about the object.
Museum Words
What's an artifact, a collection, a docent, a gallery? Try out museum-speak before you come. [+]
Archaeologist - A person who studies the way people lived a long time ago by digging up and examining bones, fossils, and artifacts found in the earth or under its waters.
Archives - A place where documents and photographs that have historical value are organized and stored.
Artifact - An object made by people.
Collection - A group of objects that have been gathered together because they have something in common, such as use, style, where they were found or when they were made.
Curator - A person who is in charge of the collections, exhibits, research activities or educational programs of a museum, zoo or other place with exhibits.
Docent - A volunteer trained to share information with visitors in a museum.
Document - A written or printed paper that gives official proof and information about something such as a birth certificate, a diploma or citizenship papers.
Era - A period of time or of history, especially one that includes or begins or ends with an important event such as the "Civil War era."
Exhibit - The display of a collection that has been organized according to a theme (also called an "exhibition"). To exhibit is to show objects by putting them on display.
Gallery - A room or building where a collection is exhibited.
Historian - A person who works at studying and writing or teaching about history.
Museum - A place where objects of art, science or history are stored and exhibited.
Preservation - The work of keeping artifacts, buildings or things in nature from being lost, damaged or destroyed so that they can continue into the future.
Primary source - A firsthand document such as a diary or a letter or an official record such as a birth certificate.
Secondary source - A document that is written based on a primary source such as a biography, a textbook or a magazine article.
Time line - A list of events or things placed in such a way as to show the order in which they occurred in history.
Scheduling Information
What kind of excursion do I want for my students -- a quick tour or a more indepth exploration? How do I schedule it? Start here for information you need. [+]
Time Travelers Tour
These self-guided tours of the entire museum last approximately 90 minutes; there is an admission fee.
Museum Explorations
Interested in more than the typical field trip for your group? Young children and students of Michigan history benefit from visits that concentrate on one part of the exhibits or a few selected galleries rather than trying to see the whole museum. There is a fee for these specialized programs that range from 90 minutes to three hours and incorporate hands-on elements.
The BIG History Lesson
An award-winning education program that began here at the Michigan Historical Museum! There is an application process and fee for this outstanding program that has students spend an entire school week at the museum.
Best Times to Visit
The Michigan Historical Museum is busiest during the spring field trip season. We encourage teachers and other group leaders to plan your visit for other times of the year when your group can get the most out of the museum experience.
Michigan Historical Museum Gallery Map
Download a self-guided tour targets your specific interests. Print this handy map and bring it with you on your next museum visit.
After Your Visit
Let students process their experience and reinforce their learning while you gather feedback about their museum excursion with the following activities.
The Two-Minute Survey
Use this 2-minute activity to help students process and reinforce what they learned during their museum visit.They can do it on the bus ride home. [+]
Museum Visit Wrap Up
Here's a quick activity that will help students process and reinforce what they've learned. It can even be done on the bus ride home. Give students each an index card or half sheet of paper, and ask them to complete two or three of the following leading sentences
- I used to think... ;but know I know...
- I really liked hearing about... ;because...
- One interesting thing I learned today was...
- I really like to talk to... ;about... ;because...
- I am still curious about...
- I wonder what it was like when...
- The most important thing I learned today was...
- I would like to know more about... ;because...
- I was surprised about... ;because...
- If I were a... ;then...
Make a Mini Gallery Guide
Students reinforce and share their museum experience and learning by making a guide to their favorite gallery. [+]
Directions
Reinforce student museum learning and experiences with the Mini Gallery Guide. Following their visit to one or more galleries of the museum, have students make mini travel brochures for future visitors. Give the completed Mini Gallery Guides to parents or to students scheduled for a future field trip or use for a bulletin board display.
Distribute copies of the Mini Gallery Guide [PDF]. Ask students to fill in each panel of the blank "brochure" with pictures andvinformation about their favorite gallery. Tell students to put their interesting experiences into the brochure so that whoever uses the brochure will want to try them, too.
Provide directions for each section of the Mini Gallery Guide as follows:
- Cover: Print the name of the selected gallery (e.g., Civil War, One-room Schoolhouse, The Great Depression, The 1960s). Refer to the museum Visitor's Guide brochure for gallery names or let students use a name that has meaning for them.
- You can see: Choose your favorite artifact or historic object from this gallery. Draw the artifact, print its name and write something about it.
- You can visit: Did you learn about any special historic places in this gallery, such as a building, a mine, or lumber camp, a room inside a house or school? Draw a picture of it, print its name and write something about it.
- You can do: What did you do in this gallery? Did you look or listen, try a computer game or watch a movie? Draw a picture of yourself doing it. Describe what you did.
- You can meet: What interesting person in history did you learn about in this gallery? Was it an explorer, a soldier, a miner, an automobile designer or someone else? Sketch the person's picture, print his/her name and write what made him/her interesting.
- What came before: Think of the museum as a big time line. What was the topic of the gallery before this one? (E.g., statehood and settlement preceded the Civil War, World War II [Arsenal of Democracy] came before the 1950s.) Determine where you were in history.
- Where you will go next: Again, if the museum is a time line, what's next in history?
After students fill in the sections of the Mini Gallery Guide, let them use the back of the sheet to draw more pictures, maps or other information they want to share but could not fit on the front. When finished, have them fold the Mini Gallery Guide in half on the long center dashed line, then in thirds. Share and discuss the guides in the classroom, then have students post them and/or give them to future museum visitors.
