Archive for the ‘Booking’ Category
Poll results
Posted on: May 24, 2013
Results of the poll that I posted last month are below. As you can see, they are rather inconclusive (interesting nonetheless!).
Note: The following responses were entered as ‘other’:
- Inspiring staff, chance to share experiences and stories, bringing subject matter to the real world/ life connections, gaining empathy, enquiry and new experiences, creativity, museums aim to be fun, welcoming and enjoyed by all
- To show them that the museum can be for them, and have something to offer them.
- A comment that I’ve had from teachers is about relative sizes of things. e.g. how a sparrow is smaller than a crow – not obvious from watching a film or even from observing live birds as they move about & are at a distance.
- It’s a good way to build relationships with students in a different environment.
- Bringing the past to life – cliché but true. A shop with items from 50p upwards. What they choose might make them think about a return family visit.
- Artefacts visually bring to life the learning & can introduce/ demonstrate so much more than a terms worth of lessons (I’m specifically thinking of Ancient Egypt & the British Museum).
- Knowledge that the teachers don’t have or can obtain easily.
- I work in an area of high unemployment and the chances of our children visiting a real museum without us taking them are quite slim so sometimes we try to find one that compliments our learning.
- I take students to the museum which reflect aspects of our specification at A level. – Dinosaurs/strat/local geology etc. Also primary children for the wow factor
- Handling real objects. Learning in a way that cannot be achieved in the classroom.
However, and as the responses to the ‘What is your role?’ question illustrate, only 7 teachers participated in the poll.
This is not surprising, particularly considering my rather unscientific approach and the limited period over which the poll was open! I do intend to recirculate this poll again (or some version thereof) but I would really appreciate any suggestions regarding the matter of targeting teachers.
Want to know how maths is applied to the real world? Bring your KS4 students to our Alan Turing: Maths, Modelling and Morphogenesis maths session that accompanys our Alan Turing and Life’s Enigma exhibition to find out. Led by University mathematicians, this workshop explores mathematical modelling, and enables students to find out more about the pioneer of biological mathematics who lived right here in Manchester: Alan Turing and how he used maths to investigate the secrets of life. The 2 hour session is available at selected times on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays until 15th November 2012.
For AS/A2 biology and Maths students, we are running A-level study days that would be perfect for them to understand the link between these two subjects. One of our Engage with the Experts A-Level study days Alan Turing: Maths and Morphogenesis works with University researchers to unlock the mathematical mystery behind patterns in the natural world and discovers how Alan Turing began to tackle this problem. It is a full day (10am-3pm) on Monday 15th October 2012, Monday 22nd October 2012 and Tuesday 13th November 2012
If you would like any more information or would like to make a booking, please contact Alexa on alexa.jeanes@manchester.ac.uk or 0161 3061764.
Animal Explorers visit
Posted on: June 8, 2012
On Thursday 24th May, a group of children, staff and parents from Wetherby street children’s centre, Openshaw, visited the museum for our early years animal Explorers session which was led by one of our freelance staff, Karl Harris .
Children from Wetherby children’s centre taking part in an animal explorer session
The session began in the Nature Discovery gallery with the story ‘Polar bear, Polar Bear, What do you hear ?’ ( Bill Martin junior and Eric Carle) and the group were fabulous at making all the animal noises, including the more unusual animals like the peacock and hippo! Then, dressed as animal explorers, complete with hats and binoculars and armed with a bag of ‘clues’, the group looked for the animals in the story on the Living Worlds gallery, Bird gallery and Vivarium. At the end of the session , Adam from the Vivarium brought one of the lizards down to meet the group. One of the children asked if the lizard had a name and as it doesn’t, he invited them to name it. They have suggested Fillip, Tigger or Mango Ba Jango – so watch this space!
Children from Wetherby children’s centre meet a friendly lizard from our Vivarium
Comments from parents who supported the visit, said that the museum was interesting with a wonderful atmosphere. One parent said her daughter is still talking about the visit and making animal sounds. She particularly liked the use of props and being able to touch live animals helped to deal with fears/phobias .
The staff agreed that children thoroughly enjoyed the visit and the timing of the session and variety of activities were appropriate for the age of the children and held their interest.
The impact of the visit has been evident in the play and language the children are using back at the centre. When reading another story the children were able to identify the peacock from Polar bear, Polar Bear and they also remembered the letters and the animals being on holiday.
Most importantly they had lots of fun!
For further information about our early years programme, visit our website.
To make a booking, ring Jill Anderton, our bookings coordinator on 0161 275 2630
Early Years programmes
Posted on: May 2, 2012
We are in the process of updating the early years page on our website and thought it would be useful to highlight our current programmes led by museum staff …
Sessions for Nursery and Reception
For up to 15 children (90 minutes)
£3.50 per child (minimum charge £50)
Animal Explorers – Polar Bear Polar Bear (New)
Polar Bear has a problem, some of his animal and bird friends have gone missing! Can you help him to find them? Come and explore our Living Worlds, bird gallery and vivarium as you embark on this exciting mission to find his missing friends.
At the end of the session there is an opportunity to meet one of our live animals from the vivarium!
You might be interested in looking at our Frog Blog
Dinosaur Explorers
Say hello to Stan the T.rex and become dinosaur hunters whilst following the footprints around the Fossils gallery. What will you uncover on our dinosaur dig?
Unearthed! Big Dig
Join us to explore the Unearthed : Ancient Egypt exhibition to find treasures of the Egyptian world! What exciting things will you discover?
For details of how to book, have a look at our early years page and information for teachers.
We are also able to book self programmed visits and offer resources for teachers.
To make a booking please ring our booking line on 0161 275 2630
Year 9 Free Workshop Offer
Posted on: October 24, 2011
The Manchester Museum is offering a limited number of History workshops for free!
© The Trustees of the British Museum
Engage your Year 9 students in exploring the diversity of culture within Africa and encourage them to discuss what influence European contact had on local areas. Using Museum galleries and object handling students will have the chance to explore the relationship between Africa and Europe, with a focus on the preiod of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and during the height of British Empire.
FREE Sessions are available on the following dates:
Monday 7th November
10.30am-12.30pm
Monday 14th November
1pm-3pm
Monday 28th November
1pm-3pm
Alternate dates and times are available on request, but may cost the usual workshop price of £75.
To find out more, or to book one of our limited FREE sessions, please contact Cat Lumb either via email: catherine.lumb@manchester.ac.uk or telephone: 0161 3061765.
Souvenirs for School groups…
Posted on: March 4, 2011
Our commerical team have recently launched a combined Museum and Whitworth Gallery Shop Blog known as Culture Shop Manchester. The aim is to to provide a means for customers and visitors to find out what we have available in the forms of products and offers whilst giving the shops a living internet presence.
One of their first posts is about School Groups & Goodie Bags: so take a look if you want to know more and order some fantastic souvenirs for your students to remember their educational trip to the Museum!
No room at the inn?
Posted on: May 4, 2010
Image, Students in our LifeLab
There’s a fantastic buzz in the museum’s galleries during term time. Children and young people of all ages and abilities are busy exploring the displays and developing their skills of inquiry and analysis. School groups are carefully coordinated by the Learning Team to ensure the best possible experience for every child.
The timetable is organised to provide each group with enough room for an enjoyable and meaningful visit. A quick glance at the website will tell you that we offer guided visits and workshops on a wide range of subjects for the whole age range, from Early Years to post-16. To be fair to everyone this inevitably means that spaces and time slots have to be rationed. We recommend that teachers plan as far ahead as possible and book the visit early to avoid disappointment but, like any other popular service or facility, we sometimes find ourselves in the situation where we can’t offer the dates and times when people would like to book a visit to the museum. We hate to turn schools away but when the timetable is full adding more groups would compromise the quality of experience for everyone.
Image, Students being taught on the Pre-historic Life Gallery
So what’s a teacher to do when the museum says it’s full? There is an answer. Over the past six or seven years museums and galleries around the country have been boosting the quality of the service to schools with the help of Renaissance in the Regions, a government-funded programme of staff training, collections development and improvements to facilities.
The Manchester Museum is part of the ‘Northwest Hub’ – a group of institutions dedicated to sharing good practice and professional development. The region’s museums and galleries are tuned in to the changing curriculum and develop programmes in partnership with teachers and pupils. Of course each museum or gallery has different collections and teachers want their students to see particular objects – you wouldn’t expect to study the ancient Egyptians in a science museum or vice versa (although cross-disciplinary learning is exactly where museums and galleries excel so I wouldn’t discount the idea!). One result of Renaissance in the Regions is that we can now consistently offer high quality alternatives for learning in most subject areas across the wider group of museums and galleries. Teachers looking for a relevant, engaging and productive cultural experience now have a better choice than ever, which is why we are happy to recommend our colleagues in other venues if we are unable to accommodate a group at The Manchester Museum.
Image, Andrew Gray and a panther chameleon
Back in November, John Thomson, a science teacher from the local school William Hulme’s Grammar School – a ULT Academy contacted me to see if we could provide something really special for his year 7 year group during National Science Week.
We came up with an exciting programme of workshops, including a talk from our Curator of Herpetology Andrew Gray, Clippy Island: An investigation into Natural Selection workshop and Adapt! our OOKL mobile phone interactive gallery tour. John decided to apply for funding from the British Science Association for the visit and we were delighted to find out a few weeks later that his application had been successful which enabled us to go full steam ahead planning this bespoke Science day.
Image, Spiny tail lizard
The challenge on our part was the logistics of the visit. 120 students is a lot to have in one day, but we managed to put together a timetable where 60 students would visit for the morning and 60 in the afternoon with them all managing to participate in all activities. So on Thursday 18th March, we were ready to welcome William Hulme’s Grammar School to The Manchester Museum.
Image, Red Eyed Tree Frog
Andrew was first up and his talk to the whole group was fascinating. He talked about his background and how his interest in frogs and reptiles stemmed from an early age. Andrew explained the variety of methods scientists (like himself) use to research the animals and why scientific research is so important. Andrew also covered what measures are being taken by scientists to try and conserve the habitat to prevent the animals becoming extinct. And of course he has his trump card – the live animals!
Andrew showed the students some of the Live Animal collection in the museum such as male panther chameleon, an African python, a spiny tailed lizard and beautiful brightly coloured tree frog with Andrew describing the interesting and distinguishing features of each animal, including their adaptations to their environment. The students had the rare opportunity to see these amazing animals at really close quarters which they were really excited about. The animals did a great job too and were surprisingly calm when posing behind a sea of mobile phone cameras.
Image, Clippy Island in Action
The 60 students were then split into two groups and they took part in 2 separate activities, Adapt! and Clippy Island. Adapt! uses OOKL mobile phone technology, and students followed an interactive trail around the Animal and bird life galleries and discovered the features and variation that lead to adaptation. In the Clippy Island: An Investigation into Natural Selection workshop, the students became a population of birds called ‘Springbeaks’ and experienced feeding over several seasons. They saw first hand how adaptations created by natural variations within a species can enable a population to change over time. The two groups swapped activities after completing them, so everybody took part in all activities. The students were then transported back to school and the next 60 students arrived in the afternoon to follow the same format.
Image, Students on the Mammals Gallery
John’s vision was that the visit was cross curricular and lead onto the students using the visit as a basis to study a variety of topics in a variety of subject for example, looking at Costa Rica in geography, drawing/painting the animals they have seen in art, investigating methods of conservation and research in science, producing creative writing pieces about animals in English and data analysis of populations etc in numeracy. As well as the students getting an exciting and stimulating visit that they will remember. I hope that it proved to be a success on his part. Overall we really enjoyed hosting William Hulme’s Grammar School on this special Science day during National Science Week– it was a very hectic day, and we hope that the students visit us again sometime in the future.
Here are some examples of the student’s reviews they wrote of the trip back at school – judge for yourself as to whether they enjoyed the visit.
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- Image, Andrew Gray and a panther chameleon
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- Image, Spiny tail lizard
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- Image, Red Eyed Tree Frog
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- Image, Clippy Island in Action
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- Image, Students on the Mammals Gallery
If you would like to give your students something different and engage then in an exciting day out that they will remember, do contact us and we would love to talk about what we can do for your students.
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Image, The University of Manchester
We work very closely with the Widening Participation team at The University of Manchester, sharing skills and opportunities for learners. Below is some information from a colleagues of ours, Emma Lewis, about exciting and engaging activities for Aimhigher cohorts across Greater Manchester.
The Widening Participation team at The University of Manchester is really excited about some fantastic new opportunities we are able to offer for Aimhigher learners in Greater Manchester. With 15 different activities ranging from ‘Taking Math’s Further’ to an Archaeology workshop, there really is something for everyone – and over the next five months there are plenty of activities designed to complement the curricula topics you are covering at school and to broaden your pupil’s knowledge and experience.
We are really pleased with these free activities we’re able to offer, and would like to fill the places as soon as possible. Certain dates are fixed for most events; others are to be negotiated depending on availability of schools. Activities are available mainly to Y10 and Y11, but some places for Primary learners and Y8 and Y9 Pupils are on offer. If you would like more information and an outline of all the events we have on offer, please contact Emma Lewis on emma.m.lewis@manchester.ac.uk
Darwin Primary Science
Posted on: September 30, 2009
Image, Darwin extravaganza
As mentioned by Cat in a previous post, the Museum’s Darwin extravaganza is now in full swing. The new Nature Discovery area is now open, as well as the photographic exhibition ‘In Darwin’s Footsteps’. Our graphic novel style exhibition ‘Charles Darwin: evolution of a scientist’ is also due to open on 3 October 2009 and will run until 30 August 2010.
For the past few weeks, Hannah and I have been busy thinking up what exciting activities we could put together for the Darwin extravaganza and are delighted to be able to offer a package of Darwin related programming for Primary groups.
Image, Darwin Explorer Kit
For groups wanting a self-programmed visit we are offering ‘Darwin Explorer Kits’, which give you the opportunity to explore Nature Discovery in depth. The kits contain important scientific equipment such as magnifying glasses and binoculars as well as activity plans that cover topics such as habitats, adaptation and food chains. The activities also encourage children to develop important explorer skills of close observation and scientific drawing. We are offering 5 groups the opportunity to borrow a Darwin Explorer Kit for free and from then on kits can be borrowed for just £10. To book a self programming session and borrow a kit please contact Nora on 0161 275 2630 (Mon-Fri, 9am-4pm).
As well as Darwin Explorer Kits we are also offering a limited number of Darwin Super Learning Days for teachers wanting to bring large groups for a whole day. These Super Learning Days give pupils the opportunity to explore Darwin’s big ideas through object handling, tours and creative activities. Only 3 dates are available: Friday 27 November, Friday 4 December and Friday 11 December 2009. Contact Nora on 0161 275 2630 for more information.
Do check out the primary science learning pages on the Museum website for more information on available sessions. We’re really excited about the Darwin extravaganza and what we can offer primary groups – so do get in touch and we look forward to seeing you soon!
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