Be an Archaeologist: Active Learning in Social Studies
Archaeology is a science—and an art. It involves digging through time to analyze what remains from human civilizations in the past to make theories about human behaviour and societal expectations. Archaeologists piece together amazing stories to engage the world from the garbage left behind. They must be methodical, thoughtful, and ethical. Even with careful work, they will still get things wrong.
Why does archaeology matter? I am teaching grade seven this year and that involves ancient civilizations, which we know about because of archaeology…and stories….it gets a little fuzzy. What we know today about a civilization could change tomorrow based on what is uncovered and learned. The knowledge is not set in stone, even when it is in a book and looks like it is absolutely the truth.
How do I help my sevens begin to think about archaeology? I have a series of 3-4 lessons which provide a cursory overview before we start to dig-pun intended— in to any of the ancient civilizations. The first lesson asks students to become the archaeologists. They look at field notes as well as sample bags to try to decide what the family living at this dig site might have been like as well as what the society they come from valued.
The Lesson
Part 1: Introducing the Field Notes
The Premise: You are working with your fellow archaeologists to try to determine what the people who lived at this dig site were like. You are also trying to hypothesize what rooms were in the possible ‘home’ based on the sample bags provided
Set Up the Room
Tables with 4 people are ideal
Random groups
Archaeologists will work in pairs at their table and then share ideas to fill in gaps
Scaffold for Success
Hand out the map 1 per pair
Explore the legend as a class
Model analysis
what are the items?
What do they tell you about the family?
What do they tell you about the society?
Part 2: Exploring the Evidence
Each pair receives one bag to start
The goal is to draw/analyze 3-5 items per bag to learn about the family and the society
The teacher should control switching bags…first switch with the other pair at your table, and then switch through the teacher
The goal should be to see a bag from at least 4 rooms
Analysis takes 5-15 minutes per bag
Be flexible! I had designed this part of the activity to take about an hour. We ended up doing an additional forty minutes after recess. Some groups explored a bag from every room and most handled four bags.
Even with the modelling I did on the board, some groups needed encouragement! Every group dove in to their sample bags, but some were not sure what things represented. Even the groups that could identify what an object was an how it might have been used, had some challenges extrapolating to the society in general. I wandered around providing prompts or hints. I asked questions and tried to help groups uncover possible truths.
Sample Prompts
A key! How interesting. Why do you think the family would need a key—what might it say about the society?
That salt shaker has a painting on it. Hmmmm. That makes me think this society might value art.
You found a Disney keychain, film from a walking tour in Quebec, and an Alberta pin. Wow! This family must like to travel!
Even with the extended time, some groups wanted to see more bags. I allowed pairs to work during silent reading on more analysis, because…why not let kids voluntarily do more work/critical thinking!
At the end of the initial block, I collected the field notes and stapled them all together. This was done so that they could be handed back the next day to help with the analysis.
Part 3: Analyzing the Data to Make a Theory (The Next Day)
The next day, we talked about archaeology and followed it up with five questions the students had to answer individually about the work they did the previous day. The point of the questions was to get the kids thinking like an archaeologist by extrapolating ideas based on the artifacts they explored.
Time for some honesty. Okay, I taught these lessons four years ago and really should have updated the second part of the lesson before teaching it again. Although I did an okay job defining archaeology and introducing the questions, the kids still needed more support. I needed to provide more scaffolding—especially for my ELL Students because the language is challenging. You get to benefit from my mistakes! I have found a few very short videos that I wish I had shown/unpacked with my kids so they had more information before starting the questions.
Videos 1-3 Nat Geo Kids
These are three short (<2 min. each) videos defining archaeology and giving a glimpse of a famous site (Pompeii).
Video 4 Archaeology in Canada
This video is a bit longer (~7 min) and it definitely has some complex language, but I think I will show it to my kids. It is about a dig site on an island in coastal BC that was started based on the oral history of a specific First Nations group. It highlights the importance of LISTENING to oral traditions and working in PARTNERSHIP with local groups to explore history. This discovery has had a major impact on our understanding of the migration of people during the last ice age.
Creating Your Own Dig Site
To create my dig site, I first went around my house with a bucket and collected junk, broken things, and toys. Around the time that I was putting this lesson together, my grandmother died and we were cleaning out her house….so I had a good source of random things and took advantage of it!
Once I had collected 30-50 things—some of which I had no idea what they were, I sorted them in to general categories (kitchen stuff…playroom stuff….garage stuff) and then put the piles into bags with 5-7 items in each bag. If something had multiple parts like a barrette, I would purposely break up the pieces and stick them in different bags. Since I had lots of kitchen stuff and garage stuff, I made two sample bags for those ‘rooms’. Once I had figured out the rooms, I made a sketch for my dig site and included text features like a title and a key.
In each bag, I made sure to include a few things the students would recognize (e.g. a salt shaker or key chain) as well as a few things that would take more extrapolation.
It was fun to make and cleaned out my junk drawer!
Final Thoughts
I have met so many students who don’t like social studies. I have met many teachers who don’t like how language heavy social studies can be and they struggle to make it as hands-on and engaging as they would like.
I get it. When we are faced with topics like government, ancient civilizations, the charter of rights and freedoms, and racism in Canada, it can feel daunting. Sometimes we feel like we have to get all of the facts out and that means lots of content. When this happens, take a moment and breathe. The most important parts of social studies education are the curricular competencies. These competencies are linked to the processes of social studies as well as different aspects of historical thinking.
Aspects of Historical Thinking
Historical Significance
Continuity and Change
Cause and Consequence
Historical Perspective Taking
Ethical Judgement
…hmmm these sound familiar!
If we use the processes of social studies as well as the different aspects of historical thinking as the lens to explore the content, it opens up so many opportunities for hands-on learning. You move away from details/facts and move towards actively engaging with content in meaningful ways that are fun!
The archaeology mini-unit I am running, for example, highlights many of the processes of social studies. It also provides opportunities to explore significance, evidence, perspectives, and ethical judgments as we look at important dig sites as well as the history of archaeology.
The Critical Thinking Consortium has published so many amazing resources and has free online resources. I know many school districts also have district logins for the password protected areas. The company is located in BC and has educators working for it. This company literally wrote the book on creating hands-on historical thinking and geographic thinking lessons. Several of the books are available in FRENCH and ENGLISH. When I was looking at their website today, I also found an archaeology book that I might have to buy…. The link to the books I am referencing is HERE.
Free yourself—and your students—from the worry of not knowing all of the details or covering all of the topics. You do not have to have all of the answers or be an expert on each topic. Instead, dig deeply into the curricular competencies to get kids thinking like historians, archeologists, and human geographers. Get messy, think critically, and learn alongside the amazing humans you get to teach.