Sarah Parker

Advanced Placement Language and Composition teacher, Gail Novaco, decided to take her class on a field trip to the Yale Art Museum for the first time this year.
The field trip took place on Wednesday, February 8th.
The AP class consists of 22 students intrigued by the English language and its composition. All 22 students attended this field trip.
Novaco thought this trip would be helpful for the students who plan to take the AP Exam in May.
As part of the national test, the students will be given sources from which to write a synthesis essay, where they take a stance on the issue.
One source given will be a visual source. Mrs. Novaco explained that going to the art museum will teach the students how to understand an image.
At the Yale Art Gallery, the students were given a tour from the museum’s Gallery Teachers. The tours challenged the students to think creatively and abstractly with thorough examination of the pieces.
One highlight of the field trip was the Hamlet Play Scene. Although the students have not read Hamlet yet for school, the painting was described to them.
The famous painting displays a king and a queen on a throne surrounded by townspeople, but in front of them is the deceased king’s son, Hamlet, and his girlfriend. All of the characters in the painting are watching a reenactment of Hamlet’s father’s death.
The tour guide explained that the painting shows the hostile feeling experienced by Horatio and Hamlet, the only characters in the painting to not be looking at the reenactment.
Instead, they are watching Claudius’s reaction towards the reenactment of the death of Hamlet’s father, who is also Claudius’s brother.
They are trying to see if Claudius shows any signs that he actually killed his brother. The students were taught about the symbolic meanings of the colors, clothes, and styles in the painting. The students engaged in many of the discussions on other art pieces similar to Hamlet Play Scene painting.
This field trip taught the students how to decode and discuss a visual aid. Going through the art gallery, with a guided tour, showed them what to look for in a picture.
“The field trip encouraged me to use the visual images more, something that I normally wouldn’t know how to understand.” AP Language student, Rachel Murphy, said. “It will help me understand the sources on the Advanced Placement test.”
Many students also said they would use the skills they learned on the field trip at other times when they are looking at artwork or images.
The successful field trip will help the Advanced Placement students to obtain a perfect score on their synthesis essays because it taught them the skills they need to comprehend the visual aid sources.