Indiana Academic Standard correlation to a museum school visit 7th Grade Language Arts 7.1.3 Clarify word meanings through the use of definition, example, restatement, or through the use of contrast stated in the text.           While visiting The Children's Museum, challenge your students to find new words in exhibits or listen for them in a presentation. These words will often appear as part of an exhibit, next to the object they describe. Have students restate the meaning of the word and use it in a sentence. 7.2.1 Understand and analyze the differences in structure and purpose between various categories of informational materials (such as textbooks, newspapers, and instructional or technical manuals).           Compare various informational materials on a visit to infoZone, a branch of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library located at The Children's Museum. Lead students in a comparison of these with the types of guides and maps that are available at the museum, considering length, information presented, and audience. 7.4.1 Discuss ideas for writing, keep a list or notebook of ideas, and use graphic organizers to plan writing.           A visit to The Children's Museum offers man great writing prompts. Before visiting, discuss with your students what they might write about. Preview The Children Museum's website for an overview of the exhibits. As a class, brainstorm possible ideas and begin a concept map or storm web. Encourage students to take a notebook to jot down more ideas during their visit. 7.4.5 Identify topics; ask and evaluate questions; and develop ideas leading to inquiry, investigation, and research.           The Children's Museum will inspire students to do further research on their own. For instance, after visiting Story Avenue, they may want to know more about African-American biographies, folktales, and literature. Students can begin this research at the infoZone or do it once they return to school. During their visit, encourage students to take notes and formulate questions about what they see to take with them when they begin their research. Science 7.1.1 Recognize and explain that when similar investigations give different results, the scientific challenge is to judge whether the differences are trivial or significant, which often takes further studies to decide.           Check the Programs Guide for times and register to visit the Biotechnology Learning Lab in ScienceWorks. There students will get the chance to observe and perform some simple experiments. Have students compare their results with each other. Are they similar or different? Discuss whether these differences are important or not significant in a scientific investigation. Discuss also why more experiments might be necessary, depending on whether results were similar or widely different! 7.1.5 Identify some important contributions to the advancement of science, mathematics, and technology that have been made by different kinds of people, in different cultures, at different times.           Visit the All Aboard! Gallery to see the importance of trains in American life and economy. Near the back find the display about the important contributions of African-American inventors in railroads. Have students find the origin of the term "The Real McCoy"!           Find the Biotech Timeline in ScienceWorks to see how food technology has been developed over thousands of years by different cultures. Discuss with students that science and technology have been developed all over the world, and that today we reap the benefits of all of these advancements! 7.1.7 Explain how engineers, architects, and others who engage in design and technology use scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.           Look for special exhibits about engineering and construction, and check out the construction taking place at The Children's Museum for Dinosphere! There are signs to help visitors understand what is going on, and students can also ask questions of staff. In ScienceWorks visit the construction site and find examples of simple machines. Discuss how they make work, like lifting or pushing heavy equipment and materials, easier. 7.3.1 Recognize and describe that the sun is a medium-sized star located near the edge of a disk-shaped galaxy of stars and that the universe contains many billions of galaxies and each galaxy contains many billions of stars.           Get free tickets to watch the planetarium show "Galileo and the Tale of the Telescope" to learn about how the telescope was developed and what we have learned about stars, the solar system, and galaxies, using it and other space exploration technology. 7.3.10 Explain how the thousands of layers of sedimentary rock can confirm the long history of the changing surface of Earth and the changing life forms whose remains are found in successive layers, although the youngest layers are not always found on top, because folding, breaking, and uplifting layers.           In ScienceWorks find the model of the limestone beds near the rock-climbing station. There students will find examples of bedding plains, slightly different colored layers with slightly different fossils, that correspond to different eras in the geologic past. Find the Borden Sea Floor fossil, a piece of the ocean floor that once covered Indiana. It features some very large aquatic fossils. Discuss how changes in fossils indicate the passing of time, and how they become bigger and more complex as time goes on. 7.4.10 Describe how technologies having to do with food production, sanitation, and disease prevention have dramatically changed how people live and work and have resulted in changes in factors that affect the growth of human population.           By reserving a spot at a Biotechnology Learning Lab presentation, you can learn about changes in food technology, like the development of cheese and genetically altered foods. See how DNA is extracted from an onion. Explain to students that science has changed our capacity to grow more food and to preserve food longer, so that we are able to feed the growing population. Visit infoZone to find answers to the questions that are raised by the presentation. Visit the lab's webpages at http://www.childrensmuseum.org/biotech/index.htm. Social Studies 7.1.2 Describe the achievements of ancient Egypt in art, architecture, religion, and government and the development of the concept of theocracy.           The Egyptians were such an advanced civilization that scientists still debate how such impressive structures like the pyramids were constructed! Visit the What If? gallery and visit an Egyptian tomb and a real Egyptian mummy. Find out how and why the Egyptians spent so much time preserving their dead and building elaborate tombs. Learn about Egyptian religious beliefs and cultural practices, and see how archaeologists and scientists work today to uncover the past. 7.5.4 Examine the impact of cultural change brought about by technological inventions and innovations in the past and present.           Explain to your students that material culture is the objects, costumes, instruments, dishes, etc, that various peoples leave behind. Material culture reflects the environment and the aesthetic preferences of the culture--for instance, The Southwest Indians made pottery from the surrounding clay and sand and decorated it with designs inspired by the landscape. Visit Passport to the World to see objects from around the world. Help students observe how some things change because the environment changes due to technology--for instance, traditional costumes might be made out of new cloth like polyester or rayon, or traditional music might be played on metal drums. 7.5.5 Trace steps in the development of written language, including the evolution of Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Chinese calligraphy.           See examples of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the What If? Gallery and decode the name of The Children's Museum's mummy. Ask students to read the signs and explain how hieroglyphs or pictographs are different than an alphabet system like we have in English. Also be sure to tell students that ancient Egyptian writing is one of the first written languages in the world, dating back almost seven thousand years!

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