Special to Pelahatchie News
Pelahatchie Elementary School’s Venture students recently opened the Pelahatchie Pocket Museum, a temporary collection of miniature exhibits displayed during parent/teacher conferences.
The museum was the final project for the “Tiny Worlds, Big Ideas” unit completed by 2nd-6th grade gifted students. Inspired by the original Hattiesburg Pocket Museum, these curators spent weeks researching, designing, and building their own mini-museums. The Hattiesburg Pocket Museum itself was born during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With an $800 budget, they transformed a boarded-up window into a tiny, changing exhibit designed to bring a much-needed sense of “surprise and delight” to the isolated community.
Each student curator selected a topic they were passionate about, dove into its history, and then constructed a miniature exhibit to showcase their findings. The result was a diverse collection of pocket-sized worlds, each representing a “big idea” brought to life.
The project forced the students to be creative and push themselves. Student Jasmine said she was most proud of “stepping out of her comfort zone” to get the job done. Another student, Sunnie, explained how the project changed the way they thought: “It made us think outside the box. We had to make everything smaller so to do it, we had to think harder.”
“Students were truly inspired by the idea that you don’t need a huge space or unlimited funds to make a powerful statement or share something fascinating,” said Venture Teacher Britnee Barnett.
Next to each mini-museum was a personalized QR code that, when scanned, played a voice recording of the student curator sharing fascinating facts and historical context about their chosen topic.
As a final component of the unit, the students will be taking a field trip to the source of their inspiration, the original Hattiesburg Pocket Museum.
The “Tiny Worlds, Big Ideas” project is just one example of the enrichment-based learning provided by the Venture Program at the Rankin County School District.
The mission is to provide optimal opportunities for gifted students to realize their maximum potential. The curriculum covers four broad instructional areas: thinking skills, creativity, personal development, and research.
All 1st and 2nd grade students are screened for the gifted program. Students in 2nd-6th can be referred for screening by anyone having reason to believe that the student might be intellectually gifted. Screener sample questions can be found on the RCSD website (www.rcsd.ms) under gifted education. You can contact the venture teacher at Pelahatchie Elementary, Britnee Barnett, at [email protected] if you have any questions.
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