Schools & Colleges
Advice on visiting and planning a visit
In order to ensure that your visit is enjoyable, it is advisable for groups to follow the steps below:
A) Groups must book in advance for any type of visit to the Museum and can do so by emailing the Bookings Office.
B) Due to limitations in space and closure of the upper balconies, it is only possible for 60 children to enter the building per hour. The ratio of adults to children is 1 to 15 and 1 to 10 for other groups. Email the Bookings Office for further details.
C) The duration of each visit is 45 minutes; 20 minutes on each of the two floors of the Museum or 45 minutes on one floor.
D) In order to ensure your visit is comfortable and enjoyable it is advisable to follow the steps below:
a. Teachers/group leaders should gather their group together before they enter the building;
b. The Teacher/Group leader advises staff at the reception desk of their arrival and proceeds to bring the group into the main exhibition space;
c. The group leaves their bags and coats on the bus.
Making the Most of Your Visit
The Education and Outreach Department have developed some resources for schools and teachers who are planning to visit the museum. These can be picked up at the museum, or can be downloaded by following the links at the end of this page.
If on a self guided visit, set a task for your students, for example: My Favourite Animal activity sheets are available for groups on request or you can make up your own worksheets. List or sketch a number of animals of interest. If you are taking a workshop, write up a report on the lesson.
Researching what your group can see and do
It is advisable for the teacher to make a visit to the museum in advance of bringing a group in. If this is not possible, the Bookings Assistant or the Natural History Education Assistant can assist in visit preparation by establishing what you require and matching this as closely as possible to the resources we have on offer.
Have an objective in mind for your visit, i.e., build the visit into a project at school – make it more than a “day out”. For example, is the visit an information gathering exercise, is it science, art, geography or cross- curricular related?
Pre and post visit work
Prepare the class for the visit – give them an idea of what they can expect to see or have a discussion about the Museum in advance of the visit. Other topics you might like to cover might include ecology, endangerment & extinction, predator-prey interactions, camouflage and animal prints, conservation, different rock types or how fossils are formed.
Have some follow-up work planned for back in the classroom such as student presentations about favourite animals; displaying sketches; drawings created in the Museum; group presentations on discussions on discoveries; information gathered by looking at animal taxonomy, etc.
You can also base a visit on following one of the Education Department's activity sheets such as My Favourite Animal, The Zoo in My Garden or Everything Counts. Copies of all our activity sheets are available for groups on request and are also downloadable as pdfs below.
For more information including suggest visit themes, download a copy of our Teachers Information Pack 2010-2011.
Teachers Notes 2010 - 2011 Natural History Teachers Notes 2010 2011.pdf (1.05 MB, Adobe PDF)
Natural History Activity Sheets
All our activity sheets and our poster are printed on paper from sustainable sources.
General Activity Sheets
Biodiversity Series
Seasonal Trail Series
Do Not Disturb Worksheet Do Not Disturb Worksheet.pdf (0.58 MB, Adobe PDF)