My Best Museum Experience
I had the most educational experience in the museum when I was in middle school. The whole class went on a field trip to the National Royal Palace where there is the Korean National Heritage Museum. (http://www.cfnmk.or.kr/eng/index.htm)
Our teacher gave us an assignment in the Museum. She had each student pick out a piece of interest and sketch out a drawing of it and color it with water colors. In order to pick a piece I carefully examined what is interesting about the things inside the exhibition. I walked around with two of my friends and we ended up discussing quite deeply about the functions of the tools and what meaning the decorations might have had. Because of the assignment and social discussion among friends, I was looking at the artifacts in details and that led me to become curious about the meanings of the decorations and why is was shaped in such a way. I think this experience led me to focus of the design elements.
I had other interesting museum experiences, but this on stands out as the most educational one since I was really engaged in deep inquiry.
(I'm trying to work on the wiki but it's hard to learn how to upload pictures and stuff...(sighing.,.))
Nuree Choe Your memorable museum experience at the National Heritage Museum makes me regret not going there this summer when I had the chance! But this post also makes me question what the point of sketching and coloring a piece? Was there any prerequisite lesson or talk about your visit that may have added to the learning experiences of each student. When I was teaching, my head teacher and I had the students choose something from the exhibit we were visiting that day and sketch it. There were no explicit stated reasons why we had the children do this activity; I figured it was a way for students to soak in the details of the pieces as well as sharpen their observation skills. But I wonder when teachers have students do this kind of activity, if the expectations should be clearly stated for students and new teachers. Was there any discussion and sharing after this particular trip? How did the teachers assess if you got anything out of the experience?
Dahwun Kim That is a excellent question! Well, I don't think the teachers actually have a curriculum about the activity of sketching. There weren't any discussions before and after that experience. I guess some of us just took that further and discussed among ourselves whereas some students didn't reflect on this experience as much. I wished there were more instructions so that we knew what we were suppose to focus on and reflect on while we were discussing the details of the pieces we studied as we sketched. :)