Docent led class tours are interactive. Tours stress critical thinking, observation skills and creative evaluation through close observation and discussion of artworks. See Planning Your Group Tour.
Curriculum Connections
Customized Curriculum Connections offer teachers a way to integrate Visual Thinking Strategies while meeting curriculum standards outside the classroom. Language Arts and Social Studies are particularly recommended. Gallery activities, related hands-on art projects or writing exercises in response to a work of art are offered. The teacher and the Museum Educator can determine the structure of the visit.
Bus Funding is available to public k-12 schools with a shortage of funding for fieldtrips. Call our Education Office to find out about our Community Partner Funds for Bus Assistance.
Call our Education Office to find out about our School Bus Assistance Program.
Fees depend on your class activity and suggested donations. Please call the Education Office for information.
This fund is made possible with generous donations by our Community Partners:
Liberty Bank
Bradley Foster and Sargent, Inc.
Greater Hartford Arts Council
Mansfield Family Practice
Ferrigno-Storrs, Realtors, LLC
Storrs Drug
Mansfield Lions Club
Wing Express
University of Connecticut League
Storrs Family Medicine
Chaperone Requirements are one teacher or chaperone per 10 students. Groups arriving without the required number of chaperones will not be admitted.
Class Outreach is a program where we come to you! A docent may come to your classroom with a work of art and/or slides to discuss with students. Talks may require a slide/overhead projector and screen. There is a modest $25 fee for docent talks.
*Distance, weather and group size may hinder availability
Teacher Packets are created for teachers who are planning a tour with their classes. Packets are made for many of our exhibitions and contain background information, questions for students, activity ideas and information resources.
Art and Basketball come together.The Benton and Husky Reach are collaborating on bringing youth to the museum and basketball games.The Junior Docent ProgramThis program is for teachers who are interested in integrating their students into the education process as part of their fieldtrip to the Benton Museum. Before the scheduled tour, the teacher selects students to train as student docents. These students come to the museum by special arrangement prior to the class visit. They will learn about the theme and exhibition(s) the class will be seeing as well as the techniques of being a docent. They will be well prepared to share the information they have learned with their peers in an interactive tour using open-ended questions to facilitate discussion.
The goal of our Junior Docent Program is to give students the skills and confidence necessary to look at a visual image and translate that into language. The student docents and their peers are learning far more than they would in a regular visit or tour to a museum. They are motivated to learn about any given exhibition, the art, the Museum itself, and a new way of thinking in order to become leaders. By utilizing, enhancing, and expanding their developing skills, they are becoming visual thinkers, active learners, and leaders amongst their peers. Please call the Education Office for more information.
860-486-1711.