What's New in School Programs

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Enjoy a relaxed night out while discovering all the exciting opportunities the museum has to offer. Throughout the evening, we’ll showcase our line-up of educational programming, share inspiring possibilities for classroom connections, and highlight upcoming lessons and resources. 

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition is back! 

Bring your students to experience this stunning exhibition as a Guided Lesson with an Indigenous Museum Educator, or choose a Self-Guided Visit.

Support either type of visit with the downloadable Wildlife Photographer of the Year Gallery Trail. Deepen your students’ learning about the art of photography and how pictures can tell a compelling story. Students can even gain valuable photography tips if they want to submit their own nature photographs to the ROM Wildlife Photography contest.

Learn more about these options and how to book by clicking the links below.

Before birds, there were Raptors.

Raptor dinosaurs have long captured our imagination, from their blockbuster fame in the hit film Jurassic Park, to inspiring our hometown basketball franchise, to must-see museum specimens in ROM’s own James & Louise Temerty Gallery of the Age of Dinosaurs. But there’s so much more to these incredible fossil animals than their fame and popularity, they have fundamentally reshaped our scientific understanding of dinosaur biology, behaviour, and evolution. 

Raptors occupy a unique and important place in the dinosaur family tree as the group most closely related to living birds. As such, they show a mix of features that link dinosaurs and birds in a thought-provoking way. In a fascinating example of evolution repeating itself, modern birds of prey, such as hawks and eagles, have independently evolved some of the same features found in raptor dinosaurs, including specialized feet with an enlarged claw and hunting strategies. 

This ROM-original exhibition, presented by Desjardins Financial Group, brings these prehistoric icons to life through stunning casts, real fossils, hands-on activities, and a large-scale immersive experience where you can step into the Hell Creek forest ecosystem and experience life with a group of Acheroraptor. This is a rare opportunity to experience one of Earth’s most legendary dinosaur species and uncover their lasting connection to the birds we know today.

This exhibition is an additional $2.50 per student

Curriculum Connections:

• Elementary: Science, Social Studies, The Arts
• Middle:  Science, History, The Arts
• Secondary: Science, Environmental Studies, The Arts

The lake has intrigued scientists for decades, and research on sediments at the bottom of the lake has identified it as having the best record of humanity's impact on the planet. This led to the lake's selection as the "golden spike" (definitive marker showing where one epoch ends and another begins) candidate for a proposed new epoch on the geologic time scale - the Anthropocene.

Learn about the effects on the land and waters when Indigenous communities started growing food in the 13th Century, the impacts of 19th Century European settlement, the nuclear age, and more. Through the study of the lake's unique varved sediments - thin, alternating layers of calcite and organic sediment marking each year - similar to tree rings - scientists have been able to chronicle nearly a thousand years of human-caused and natural environmental changes up to the present day

Showcasing Indigenous belongings and settler objects, examples of local and introduced plants, historical documentation, related artworks, core samples, and more, Crawford Lake: Layers in Time offers an engaging, compelling look at the record of human life on Earth. The exhibition illustrates how everything from early agriculture to modern nuclear weapons testing has left its mark on this unassuming Canadian lake - and on the Earth at large - encouraging us to consider what record our activities and the decisions we make today will be left behind for future generations to uncover.

This exhibition is free with general admission.

Curriculum Connections:

• Elementary:  Mathematics, Language, Science
• Middle:  Geography, Mathematics, Science
• Secondary:  Mathematics, Geography, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Studies

Visit the Gallery Trail page to view expanded Curriculum Connections.