Reflection Paper: Museum Interaction

London Reflection paper: Museum Interaction

It is no question that the museum experience is used as a resource in public schools, especially in places such as the United States with strict state testing and regulated lesson plans, restricting teachers on what they can teach and when. As a person with multiple family members who teach elementary and middle school classes, across the board the biggest complaint is testing. Trips to museums can help reduce the stress of standardized testing by enhancing curriculum and lesson plans, and allowing students to have experiences that would never be able to happen in a class room. In a paper written by a Masters student at the Dominican University of California, Jennifer Tuffy explains “ Four key elements have been identified that need to be in place in order to have a successful and meaningful fieldtrip experience at a museum. These four elements are as follows: pre-planning, interaction,

For example, in Boston there is the Boston Children’s Museum geared directly for kids one to fifteen years old, mostly engaging them in basic motor skills and creative projects. The Museum of London is great at combining both children’s activities and adult exhibits on the city’s history. When the author of A Museum of Everything, Ellie Miles revisits the pleasure gardens, which was unfortunately closed when we visited, she talks of children being amazed by the LED fireworks show that happens on the ceiling in the exhibit after the film and the delight of how the lights on the mannequins seemed to make them come to life. She explains that “interactive galleries promote a physical style of learning in which ‘the body itself is a source of knowledge” This is the key portion of task-oriented learning. The physically aspect of the museum helps kids retain the information that they absorbed on their