Visiting the Migration Museum: a Guide for Teachers

This Guide has been created for teachers, to help plan their visit to the museum, and provide some ideas for classroom activities before and after a class visit.

You will find lots of great resources and activities that can be explored in the classroom, even if you can’t make it to the museum in person. You will also find information about each exhibition with suggested questions for discussion, which can be used to support a self-guided museum visit.

Download the pdf booklet here:

Visiting the Migration Museum: a Guide for Teachers

School Visits

Education Programs

CHANGING WORLDS (Years 3-4)

This program focuses on the lives of children both pre- and post-colonisation in South Australia, including the experience of children at The Native School Establishment, which was on the same site as the Migration Museum from 1845-51, providing a unique and personal example of first contact (life for Indigenous Australian pre- and post-contact). Students will be asked to reflect on the following inquiry questions: Who lived here first and how do we know? How have laws affected the lives of people, past and present?

UNPACKING HISTORIES (Years 6-8)

This program is an investigative multimedia-assisted workshop that shows how the stories of individual lives fit into the local, national and global mosaic of history. Working like historians and curators, students wear gloves to unpack, examine, research and record the lives of several South Australians and their 20th and 21st century immigration stories. Students will be asked to reflect on the following inquiry questions: How are social histories put together? What stories can objects and documents tell? 

BEING A CHILD IN THE 19TH CENTURY (Years R-2)

In this fun education program students explore the past focusing on school life and daily life of colonial Australia before schooling became compulsory in South Australia. What did children learn at school? What technology was used?

Submit a booking request form to start the booking process. 

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If walls could speak: 5 stories from the Destitute Asylum eBook

If walls could speak is a multi-modal resource which features primary sources and is designed as an inquiry into the lives of 5 people who relied upon government welfare and were affected by government legislation from 1830s to 1918.

The iBook is best read on an iPad, and downloaded through itunes via this link: If walls could speak

(The iBook is an Apple product and can only be downloaded via iPad, iPhone or an Apple Mac computer)

Visit the Migration Museum to see the exhibition In this place: a history of the Migration Museum site, which inspired the development of the eBook.