Teaching with museums and archives
Tips and tools for helping your pupils examine documents, objects and paintings.
- Describing the object
• What are the colours of the object?
• Is it made in one piece or several pieces?
• Is it complete or broken?
• Is it decorated? If so, how?
- What is the object made of?
wood paper clay metal
cloth glass bone plastic
- What do you think this object was used for?
- Who might have used it?
adult child rich poor
- Is it like anything that we use today?
Here are some questions to think about when you are looking at written documents.
- What type of document is it? (letter, diary, report, newspaper)
- Who wrote it?
- Do you know anything about the writer?
- When was it written?
- What does it say?
- Why was it written?
- Does it give us any clues about the past?
Ask pupils to think about the messages given by the:
- sitter’s clothes
- accessories/props (things the sitter has with them)
- composition (if the portrait shows more than one sitter).