Museum+FieldTrip

** Part I. **
// As a visitor of the museum what part of the exhibit was your favorite and why? Did you find anything surprising in terms of our state's history? //

My favorite part of the museum was the fact that the exhibit did not shy away from showing North Carolina's true past like the Wilmington riots and government coup as well as events in the Civil War and treatment of minorities. I thought they did a really great job at being unbiased, as much as they can be I guess. I thought it was surprising to learn about the various groups of people that migrated to North Carolina like the Highland Scots, the Germans, and the English. I also thought it was cool to learn about pirates and that part of North Carolina's history. We have such a varied past and present, full of diverse people and I think it is important to learn about all stories, even pirates!

** Part II. **
// 1. How would you prep your students prior to their visit to the museum? // I would discuss the exhibit's main sections but I would focus on prepping students to learn about the main topic we had been focusing on at that time. For example, if we were focusing on World War 1, I would prep students about NC's experience in that war and then focus on cause and effect. I would then make sure they paid attention to that area of the exhibit because it can be overwhelming with all of that information.

// 2. As a teacher how would you guide your students through the exhibits? (would you provide them with worksheets, scavenger hunt, what would they be looking for?) // Again, I would want my students to focus on certain points in history like what we recently discussed in class. I would give them a guided notes worksheet to fill out. Instead of listening to me lecture about a certain point in history, they could see artifacts and learn about that point in history with lots of visuals. They would be looking for people, places, and events that related to the unit we were currently studying. I think museums are also a great place to see the big picture so if we were talking about African-Americans in NC, they could really see the development of that people group.

// 3. Which sections of the exhibits would you focus on the most? Why? // I would have a mixed focus of the short films available in the museum, dioramas illustrating real life and hands-on experiences because of the audience I am teaching. I don't think my students would like to spend all their time reading every placard and looking at every artifact but I would love to show them what life was like in the colonial time period by letting them go into the house, milk the cow and lift the water bucket. I would also love for them to watch the short film about the Wilmington riots and to look at the detailed dioramas. I think all of these activities would reach my students the way just looking at artifacts would not.

// 4. What types of activities would you create while the students are visiting the museum? (be specific and provide concrete examples when possible) // I would create a guided notes worksheet and a scavenger hunt. The guided notes portion would be about the current content we would be going over in the classroom. Ideally, the museum trip would be a culminating activity for a unit so the trip would be like a review or possibly even a start up for a new unit. Either way, the guided notes would just be for the section of content we were studying. I would have about 10-20 questions that would have to be answered by the students about certain exhibits or events. They would be fill-in-the-blank as well as short answer response and would be related to the details on the placards as well as the artifacts themselves. Hopefully the guided notes would serve as a potential study guide for an assessment later on in the class. The scavenger hunt would be a visual image scavenger hunt. Students would all have some type of digital device like a phone or camera and would have to find various exhibits in the museum and take pictures of the artifacts or wax people that would answer the clues on the scavenger hunt. One possible question would be "Find one example of a person in history with a rebellious spirit." Hopefully they would take a picture of a Civil War participant, a Civil Rights protester or someone else in history that stood out to them as a rebel. Another question could be "What were the Regulators?" or "Find an example of German culture present in NC." Students would take pictures and then create a presentation with a partner explaining why they chose certain images. This would be turned in to me as a quiz grade or classwork grade. I would model for them my answers in class through a presentation and then discuss the different choices we all made.

// 5. How would you extend the activities into the classroom? // I would extend the guided notes and the scavenger hunt by using the guided notes as an activating prior knowledge tool to review for upcoming assessments and for them to keep as a study guide. I would turn the scavenger hunt into a lesson on why people chose what they did and relate that to how people with power choose what to include in history. I would talk about the choices the Museum made to include certain exhibits and why they did, just like the students chose certain images to answer the scavenger hunt. I could also use the scavenger hunt to talk about visual aids in learning, relating it to propaganda in war time and/or advertisement.

// 6. What questions or concerns might you have as a teacher taking a group of students to a museum with vast exhibits? // I would have a concern with numbers. How many students could we take? How many chaperons? I would not want to lose my students in a museum with so many exhibits. I would also be concerned with them not having a central focus. The Story of NC had so many detailed exhibits within the exhibit that my students might have trouble staying focused learning about a certain aspect of NC history. If we were focusing on The Great Depression in NC or about Colonialism, there are tons of facts the students could learn about that have nothing in common with those topics and this could lead to clutter but I also think it is important to see history as a big picture and how all events relate to each other so this may not be a horrible problem.

**Part III**. Develop a field trip guide
// Create an activity and/ or a question guide for your students to complete if they were to visit the exhibit. //

Using your photo device (camera or phone), take pictures to answer the following questions on your scavenger hunt guide. Save these pictures because you will use them for a later assignment. You may work with a partner if you want but make sure you take turns taking pictures and finding the answers. While one person takes the picture the other should be the recorder and write down which exhibit the answer comes from and any other information that would answer the question on the scavenger hunt.
 * Scavenger Hunt **

1. Find one example of Native American art or architecture 2. What exactly was in a pirate's treasure chest? 3. Find one example of a house people would live in before the year 1900. 4.Find one example of a person in history with a rebellious spirit. 5. Who/what were the Regulators? 6. Find an example of German culture present in NC. 7. Take a picture of a piece of art. 8. Find a symbolic image representing the Great Depression. (examples could include clothing, food, working environment) 9. Take a picture of war-time propaganda. 10. There are many examples of houses that people lived in throughout NC's history. Take pictures of these houses keeping in mind how they are different, why they are different and who lived in them.

After you have finished make sure to save all your images and enjoy spending time in the museum... Try milking the cow (it actually MOOs), reading about the Greensboro sit-in, going inside a Native American's house and watching the short films about our state's history!