About Great Chicago Stories
Education at the Chicago History Museum
At the Chicago History Museum, the Education Department follows the guiding principal that our program and resource offerings will provide access for diverse audiences and learning styles through an array of approaches that address a variety of cognitive, social, emotional, and personal needs. We invite you to take advantage of these opportunities and we look forward to serving you.
Field Trips
Our immersive and experiential field trip program creates opportunities for students to make their own discoveries of history and encourages them to share their ideas and interpretations of the past with one another, and with our staff and volunteers. While visiting the Museum, your students will engage in cooperative learning, discussion, guided inquiry, and simulation to stimulate deeper understandings of history.
The centerpiece of this new field trip design is History a la Cart, interactive gallery stations that facilitate active learning. At History a la Cart stations, students can build a skyscraper, debate civic issues, map the path of the Great Chicago Fire, and much more. The stations are facilitated by Museum volunteers and staff.
Professional Development
We value our collaborative relationship with area educators. A wide range of professional development opportunities are offered to deepen history content knowledge, explore innovative instructional techniques, and introduce new resources. All our professional development courses support your curriculum goals, are aligned with state learning standards, and offer CPDU credits.
Classroom Resources
History is at your fingertips at chicagohistory.org! Our resource materials give you access to the Museum's collection through innovative instructional approaches that align with state standards and educational initiatives. We develop and test these projects with teacher partners to create high quality materials that are ready for classroom use. Infuse your history instruction with the powerful narratives of Great Chicago Stories, use the Museum's collection in exciting new ways when you teach History Lab lessons, and explore the Encyclopedia of Chicago to prepare your students for any research project. Access to these and many other valuable resources is free on our website.
Through these programs and instructional resources, the Chicago History Museum engages our audiences in making connections to the past based on solid historical evidence and in finding personal meanings and value in Chicago's and the nation's history.