Tour at a glance
Can your students separate fact from fiction? Put their history detective skills to the test in this engaging, interactive museum challenge!
Led by one of our experienced guides, students will examine fascinating museum objects and uncover their hidden stories — but there's a twist: each object comes with two possible histories, and only one is true. By asking questions, analysing clues and thinking critically, students must work together to decide which story is fact and which is fiction.
This fun-filled tour encourages curiosity, observation and teamwork while helping students develop their historical enquiry skills. Students will learn how historians use evidence to investigate the past and discover that not everything is always as it first appears.
Curriculum links
SESE History
- Time and chronology
- Using evidence
- Change and continuity
- Cause and effect
- Synthesis and communication
- Empathy
Relevant Strands
Third and Fourth Class
- Local studies
- Story
- Early people and ancient societies
- Life, society, work and culture in the past
- Continuity and change over time
Fifth and Sixth Class
- Local studies
- Story
- Eras of change and conflict
- Politics, conflict and society
- Life, society, work and culture in the past
- Continuity and change over time
Cross-Curricular Links
- English: Oral language, questioning, discussion and presentation skills.
- SPHE: Working collaboratively, respecting different viewpoints and informed decision-making.
- Drama: Role-play, imagination and interpretation.
- Visual Arts: Observation and responding to artefacts and objects.
Learning outcomes
- Use observation and questioning skills to investigate museum objects.
- Identify and interpret clues from objects as historical evidence.
- Distinguish between fact and fiction using evidence-based reasoning.
- Work collaboratively to discuss ideas and reach informed conclusions.
- Communicate and justify their opinions using historical evidence.
Resources and suggestions
Before your visit
- Visit the Museum in advance, if possible, to get familiar with the layout, key objects and key narratives
- Use these resources and the exhibition visit to imagine and discuss the feelings and motives of people in the past and to discuss how an event in the past may have been perceived by those who participated in it
- Consider choices made by individuals and organisations and the contexts these choices were made in
- Plan a project around your visit.
After your visit
Ideas for post-visit activities:
- Ask students to write a review of their museum visit
- Ask students to bring in their own objects from home and present a ‘Fact or Fiction’ to the classroom.
- Consider the value of museums as places to display objects that connect us with our history
- Create a museum in your classroom