When asking the students to write a paper about their experience to the museum, this is giving them the opportunity to express their thoughts and show creativity about the field trip. Students can use the functions of memory listed including attention, category knowledge, elaboration and meaningful learning showing that by paying attention to the things presented to them in the field trip. They might be new to the experience of going to a museum and seeing it almost like a sponge soaking up all of the things they see. Noticing all the fine details of the paintings and artifacts which lends to their knowledge elaboration and reading the history about some things found in the museum and learning from the notes on each thing throughout the museum.
Meaningful learning can be established if the students are studying something regarding science and industry at the time they are visiting the museum and can relate it to their classroom study. The experience for some students might begin before reaching the museum and they might choose to take the direction and write about the trip to the museum and things they see along the way and how they remember certain things like the blue sky or riding by a specific landmark to get to the museum. It might be that the student wants to take the direction of writing about how they remember the details of a specific exhibit or artist located at the museum.
Just as I learned in a prior class, during the Concrete Operational stage from ages seven to ten, children of this age are in school and they begin to deal with abstract concepts such as numbers, relationships and how to reason. They can now group certain things into categories, and put objects into size order, number order, and any other types of systematic ordering. There is a form of logical reasoning and thinking. Using logic, the child is capable of reversibility and conservation, which is the understanding of that mental operations and physical operations, can...