At 12:12 PM 3/14/98 -0500, you wrote:

>Is there any evidence that kids learn more from an exhibit when they use a
>worksheet than when they don't? To my admittedly biased eyes, it seems like
>what happens is a few kids dutifully do the worksheet.The rest of the kids
>copy off the kids who are doing it. As soon as the worksheets are
>completed, the kids stop paying attention to the exhibit.

>To me these things seem like a lazy teacher's answer to museum education.
>Now they're even handing them out to casual visitors! Arrrgh! Thanks for
>letting me vent. Can anyone defend these things?

I think they can work if you make the scavenger hunt more open ended with
some follow-up.  For example, on one of our worksheets, the kids have to
find 3 medals in the display cases and then create a medal of their own.
It's not something they can just whip through the exhibits and do and then
goof off for the rest of the trip.

I like pre and post trip surveys that examine pre-conceived notions and
then what the kids learn afterwards.  Asking questions like "Why do you
think this happened?" or "Why do you think this is?" are a lot better than
single answer questions like "What is the biggest dinosaur?"  Also open
ended scavenger hunts like "Find 3 plants that grow in the desert and
explain what adaptations they have to that environment" makes the kids
think and at least pay more attention to the exhibits than just reading the
lables or scanning the text for the one right answer.

Deb Fuller
Women in Military Service of America Memorial