We’ve created some useful downloadable resources to help you create your school exhibition. There’s everything from templates for making and advertising your exhibition, tips and guidance (including classroom activity ideas) and overviews of loans boxes and museum sessions that you could build into your planning.
Using objects as primary sources to find out about the past is in important part of students’ history learning. It can help inspire curiosity and develop critical thinking skills .The documents below give a variety of introductory historical enquiry activities that can be used in the classroom.
The memories of people in our own families and local communities can be a rich source of information about the past.
Students can use this template to collect memories about their topic from family members, people form the community or school.
Creating invitations gives students an opportunity to write for a purpose. Writing with an audience in mind can help improve levels of engagement and the quality of writing.
Writing labels can be a great way of supporting factual writing. Print out this worksheet onto card, and fold it in half to create a standing label for your object.
There are many ways to design leaflets. Fold an A4 sheet into two or three. This template has two sides and can be folded into three. The aim of a leaflet is to inform people who might visit your museum about the exhibition. Leaflets are great to support the development of persuasive and factual writing techniques. Allow students to plan their leaflet first. Encourage them to respond creatively and add drawings of the special objects on display. A visually pleasing leaflet can certainly attract more interest!
Posters are a simple way to support persuasive writing. Students should plan their posters, ensuring they remember all the information that needs to be on there. This could include the exhibition title, where the exhibition will be. Don’t forget to add dates and times. Images of an important object in the exhibition can make the poster bright and eye-catching so visitors are encouraged to come along. The template below could be used. This could also be an opportunity for students to develop their IT skills and create a poster digitally.
Museum is your classroom is an excellent opportunity to work with SEND groups. Here are some hints and tips to help SEND teachers to adapt the resource.
Keeping track of objects brought into school from a variety of sources and people can be difficult to keep track of. Museums have their own loan agreement records in order to keep track of where the objects in the displays come from so they can be returned to their rightful owners afterwards. Why not use this sheet to teachers keep a track of objects. Older classes may even be able to recruit a responsible collections officer from the class to keep the loans records up to date.
When a museum gets a new object, the curator will give it a special number called an accession number. This number helps the museum keep track of it so it never gets lost. Curators must remember to update the accession records each time they move any object to remind them where the objects have been relocated to. Museums also write down important details about each object so everyone can learn its story. Accession numbers usually have a reference to the kind of object it is or where it’s located. Perhaps a P for a photograph or an O for an object for example.
