He also encourages area teachers to visit the facility before they plan field trips, so they can identify exhibits they might want to focus on and incorporate themes they are already using in the classroom. The lesson plans are prepared each semester by university education students in a science methods class taught by Perry Cook, assistant professor of education. Since the plans are written specifically for the UWSP museum, they serve as a ready resource for area teachers.
Lesson plans are available for kindergarten through fifth grade classes.
They used the Internet to locate a school halfway around the earth so students could compare weather in two locations. After some Internet communication, a field trip to the museum helps them study habitats in the two places by looking at displays that feature animals and their surroundings from around the world. Sykes and Schiltz chose weather as a topic because children talk about it beginning in nursery school, when they put smiling suns and raindrops on the calendar each morning. Everybody really does talk about the weather. In these lessons, elementary students look around the schoolyard for evidence of how birds survive.