James Thompson

Field Trip Guide

Field Trip Guide to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History
In planning the field trip to the National Smithsonian Museum of
Natural History I visited the information booth for visitors at the
Smithsonian museum and visited the website for tours at,
http://www.mnh.si.edu/education/fieldtrip.html, (Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History, 2015). I also contacted the provided phone
number and spoke to Erik. Erik did not want to give his last name for
security reasons but was helpful in answering some questions
nonetheless.
According to Erik the Smithsonian does not to reservations for
the Ocean hall at any time but when available it can be arranged.
There is no cost for reserving tours. Often schools have done selfguided tours without arranged tour guide plans. Self-guided tours
allow for schools and their chaperones to make plans to show up at
anytime and visit relevant exhibits of interest for the day for what they
want students to see. However, in the event of having a student that
does not speak English nor understand it, the Smithsonian does have
at least one current Spanish language tour guide. To arrange tours
with a Spanish language tour guide, it must be planned two to three
weeks in advance. These tours occur by appointment only.
The field trip planning began in the middle of October for two
months in advance to figure out logistics. Ideally, if logistics work out
as planned it would occur between the fourth and fifth lessons of the
unit on geography. With an ease of access to the metro I was able to
easily access the smithsonian at a low metro fair and arrive within 45
minutes. In a sequence of lessons so that with information build up
students can go to the museum to see how their continent and ocean
geographies bring everything together and reveal new information on
human impact that can connect to other lessons in subjects like
science and see the relationship that social studies has with
understanding the environment and how humans effect it and on how
the environment impacts human settlement.
No costs are involved for parking buses. Buses can park for free
offsite at Independence Avenue after dropping off students. For Title 1
schools, the PTA may pay for cost of the bus trip itself at no cost to
students.
The field trip connects to second grade science content standard
2.5 and Social Studies 2.5 of the Virginia Standards of Learning as well

as Social Studies 2.6, toward the understanding of how legends are

used in maps. Different ocean exhibits at the museum are all labeled
with either diagram charts or map keys illustrating one or more
identifying features for each display such as coastlines, regions, or
historical movement of people. In the course of preparing for the field
trip I also discovered that the Ocean Hall, known as the Sant Ocean
Hall, is also available with detailed information at
http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ocean_hall/, (Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History, 2015). . In the event of a necessary
contingency plan, the exhibit hall is also directly available on the
Internet at
http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ocean_hall/Galleries/introduction.html,
(Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, 2015). it is
designed in a manner that allows it to act like a virtual field trip. The
information can also be studied as a possible homework assignment or
alternate class assignment before traveling to the museum.
The site offers students and teachers an immersive exposure to
vast facets of planetary systems including a history of ancient and
modern wildlife, displays of human impact on ecosystems and
including impact of climates on geographic changes. For this unit, the
field trip site offers students and teachers examples of different types
of coastal lines along the boundaries of continents that touch oceans
while the unit focuses on continents and oceans. The site also shows
examples of how planetary and continental maps can be labeled with
symbolic images to show geographies in color and locations of specific
geographic features like where different coasts are, volcanoes, and a
map displaying the movement of water in the oceans.
While I went on my own self-guided tour, I found the exhibit has
maps on display for ocean types, coastal features, and symbols
illustrating map features are relevant to unit and to show students that
more than just roads and cities and basic geographies like rivers and
mountains can be shown on a map. Brochures are available for
students that go into some detail about key exhibits. According to Erik,
if a student cannot read English, they can type the words from the
brochure into a translation program on a tablet or phone in order to
read it. Alternatively, I suggest pairing these students with other
students in groups so that they can discuss with each other what they
see.
To evaluate my experience, it was overall positive. The
Smithsonian Museum is easily accessible with free access to the public.
The collections are immense with pictures, informational plaques, and
physical objects that help students learn about how humans moved
between continents and oceans in the ancient times, as well as many

other pictures illustrating human impact on climate in different oceans

and types of ocean life that can be found in the oceans.
In the future I would change the time of day leaving to go to the
museum. Originally I left at 12:00 a.m. and arrived after 1 p.m. by
metro and only had a few hours left before closing at the museum.
For the school field trip I would live ideally around 9 a.m. to maximize
the experience. Most Smithsonian field trip guides available on the
Internet are for grades 6 -12. For lower grade students it is ideal to do
a self-guided tour for classes.
For future planners I would suggest instead of focusing on using
the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to explore related
materials to one unit, to instead visit the museum as an end-of-quarter
field trip exploring materials related to three or more social studies of
history, science, and geographic systems that were studied over the
course of a quarter to gain a more immersive experience from the
museum and three or more areas of the museum instead of one or two
exhibit spaces.
Planning for a field trip should take months of planning in
advance to work in concert with other grade level classes and
departmental subject teaching. Field trip planning should also be done
in coordination with the school administration rather than alone as one
class.

References
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (2015). Plan
your field trip. Retrieved December 14, 2015, from
http://www.mnh.si.edu/education/fieldtrip.html
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (n.d.). The Sant
ocean hall. Retrieved December 14, 2015, from
http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ocean_hall/
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (2015). The
Sant ocean hall - the Sant ocean hall tour. Retrieved December 14,
2015, from
http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ocean_hall/Galleries/introduction.html