Hi Bruce.  Thank you for your interest and contribution to help shape our newly added resource materials.  The resources are intended as a guide to teachers in preparing a contextualized range of language learning activities that will meet their students’ language learning needs. Teachers are advised to build the language and conceptual field prior to visiting the museum. They are also advised not to expect students to complete all the activity sheets in isolation.The initial series of activities in the resource focus on discussion of the concept of museums based on learners’ own experiences and expectations.  Teachers must judge the capacity and readiness of learners to understand and express opinions related to contrasting ideological viewpoints.

The resource is based on the National ESOL Curriculum. Follow-up activities, in this post visit section, are graded to a range of language proficiency levels and model appropriate ways in which learners can reflect on their museum experience.  There are 'At the Museum Activities' which can also cater for this.  In particular, depending on the level of language proficiency, many other options for this kind of approach can be found associated with resources supplied for particular exhibitions and Key Learning Areas addressed at the Museum.  In the future, we are planning to expand the extent and ESL focus on additional Museum sections with activities, particularly in the newer exhibitions, which will include supplementary materials to provide more immediate relevance to learners of language.

 

I realise that this is an ESL resource and the emphasis is on language structures and vocabulary, but I feel that it doesn't do justice to the museum's resources; even though it appears to cover them very thoroughly, it also thoroughly objectifies them, which is exactly what (I thought) museums were trying to move away from. But whether you're dealing with adults or children I would expect a unit of work on such a remarkable collection to engage the students on some sort of ideological level: language activities could still take into account the students' own experiences of community, culture, race, history etc that would help them to understand through comparison...