“The week was amazing!”
That’s what Wealthy Elementary third grade teacher Andrea Eggert says about the Immerse program at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.
One week in November, students in all three third grade classes at Wealthy spent Monday through Friday with the Museum as their classroom. They toured exhibits, learned from museum staff, and even got to handle actual artifacts from the museum’s collections.
Students loved it. Asked to describe the experience, one said, “I wish you were there with me. It was so fun. It is the same amount of fun as opening birthday gifts.”
Eggert and her fellow third grade teachers at Wealthy, Michelle Day and Elizabeth Schaefer, started working on this project last year when they applied for the Immerse program through the museum. Once their application was approved, the East Grand Rapids Schools Foundation partnered with the Wealthy Elementary PTO to fund it.
Eggert says students learned during the week how to be consumers of information. “It was an opportunity for kids to practice the ‘soft skills’ of school success,” she says. “One thing that impacts student learning across content areas is the ability to be a thoughtful and careful consumer. Whether you are reading and comprehending a story, solving a math story problem, or thinking critically about science or math topics, being able to be observant and reflective supports all learning.
“At the museum, we taught kids to look more carefully at exhibits. They learned to slow down and appreciate how they are organized, how artifacts are chosen, even how curators choose the topic.”
As the week went on, Eggert noticed how her students’ approach to the museum evolved. “There was such a difference from day one, running through exhibits and just looking at the biggest items, to the last day when they were slowing down and reading, in how much they were able to learn from each exhibit,” she says. “I’m hopeful that as we continue to reinforce this life skill in the classroom they will see that life is full of opportunities to learn; they just have to make the choice to slow down and be thoughtful consumers and creators.”
As a culminating project for the week, students will create their own exhibits to be displayed at the Immerse program’s Showcase event in May. Students will also have a chance to put what they learned into practice when they visit the Michigan Historical Museum this spring.
For more information on the grants the Foundation funds for our students, visit our Funded Grants page. You can also see a video about the Immerse program produced by School News Network.
