Grandville — When fourth-graders spend an entire week at the Grand Rapids Public Museum, there’s no limit to what they might discover.
One student enjoyed walking the Streets of Old Grand Rapids exhibit and “seeing what the streets looked like and the outfits back then,” she said.
Another liked the Backyard Adventures exhibit, where “you could look through the screens and see all the animals that are nocturnal,” he said.
‘You can really cater it to what your kids are learning in school and with their curriculum.’
— teacher Heather Sisk
And a third classmate was amused to learn that “medicine in the old days didn’t taste good, so the drugstores had a sundae bar” to help mask the taste with ice cream.
These fourth-graders and their classmates at South Elementary recently wrapped up a few months of immersive learning and engaging research as participants in the Grand Rapids Public Museum’s Immerse program. Immerse gives teachers the opportunity to turn the museum into their classroom for a week, and challenges students to create and present a project tied to their experiences among the exhibits.
Related: Discover the variety of topics students presented at this year’s Immerse Education Showcase
Like other experiential learning at South, the students’ participation was funded in part by the school’s Student Activity Account.
“It’s called Immerse because it’s about being curious and really feeling like you’re in that place at that time when you’re exploring at the museum,” said teacher Heather Sisk, who has been participating in Immerse for nine years. “Each school has a different lens depending on what (the teacher) wants to focus on, and the museum helps us put it all together.
“I think that’s what makes it so special — that you can really cater it to what your kids are learning in school and with their curriculum.”
Exploring Personal Interests
Sisk and teaching partner Maggie Keech designed this year’s experience around the theme of historical influence. In February, their fourth-graders started researching historical figures who have impacted society, focusing on Black History and Women’s History months as inspiration.
During their week at GRPM in late April, the two classes spent nearly five hours each day at the museum, with the goal of discovering the ways individuals have made an impact on Michigan and the world. Each day, they took part in docent-led programs, explored exhibits and got to watch a planetarium show tailored to their class. They also took a tour of the museum archives and spent part of one day walking along the Grand River and learning local history.
Sisk and Keech noted an important part of the Immerse experience is the opportunity for students to explore — or discover — their own interests. Each student selected one historical figure and one museum exhibit (or area of interest) to research for their Immerse projects; they put together a slideshow on the exhibit and a poster on the individual.
“I saw some interests come out (in students) where I was thinking, ‘If you hadn’t seen that, I don’t think you’d even know it existed,” Keech said. “I think the hands-on format where we got to say, ‘OK, have fun,’ and then watch them learn in the process was really cool.”
And for some, that discovery process was personal: Keech remembered a student’s “aha moment” when she encountered a display featuring a quinceañera, or a traditional Latin American coming-of-age celebration.
“She stopped and said, ‘I’m going to have a quinceañera; this is what I need to do my Immerse project on,’” Keech recalled. “And she started explaining to all the other kids about what it is, because they didn’t know. So that was pretty special.”
Learning ‘a lot of new things’
Sisk said visiting the museum after doing research on notable individuals helped reinforce what they were learning about personal impact, but in a different way:
“We’d been learning about different people in history, but then taking it to the museum and realizing that everything they see — the inventions, the tools, the foods that were brought here — those were all contributions from people who came from all over,” she said. “They all made Grand Rapids what it is today.”
Fourth-grader Molly Lancto chose to research aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman for her poster project. Coleman was the first African-American woman to earn a pilot’s license, and Molly said she was impressed by the pilot’s life story and advocacy.
“I thought it was really cool that she grew up picking cotton and then her life just got transformed when she learned how to fly an airplane,” Molly said. “She could do tricks in the air and did a lot of plane shows, but she wouldn’t do them if they didn’t allow any Black people in to see it, and I thought that was really good.”
While GRPM didn’t have anything about Coleman specifically, Molly said she was excited to explore the aviation section, given what she’d already researched.
“I got to look at the planes, like the kind she flew, and I learned they’re really old — they could sometimes only fit one person,” she said. “I did a lot of research and there were some really interesting facts in there.”
Fourth-grader Eli Pappas recently moved to Grand Rapids from Ohio and had never been to GRPM before his Immerse experience.
“It was super fun; we did a lot of cool things and I learned a lot of things,” he said. “I really liked when we went to the archives and we saw a bunch of old furniture and stuff they used to use in old hospitals and stuff like that.”
Eli said he was inspired by the Michigan landscape and chose to research the West Michigan Habitats exhibit for his slideshow. In his notes, he jotted down plenty of information about marshes and beaches to make sure he got things right in his presentation.
“I learned that there are a lot of birds in those habitats, and that the marsh has a lot of creatures in it, just in general,” he said. “One thing that was really cool was that (the exhibit) had a picture that showed what a drop of water from the marsh would look like magnified 200 times, and there was a lot of little things in it.”
Molly said she was excited to present her research to family and friends during the Immerse Education Showcase. She also hopes her family will take her back to GRPM soon.
“I liked basically all of the things there; it was so fun and I really liked to learn a lot of new things,” she said.
Read more from Grandville:
• Fourth-graders lend support to grad tackling Iditarod adventure
• Minecraft Club builds strong communities-in-common
