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Mending Pottery
Students act as archaeologist and mend broken pottery to see what they can learn.
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Hatching Chickens
Students observe chicks hatching from eggs. In this science lesson, students view a video to develop an understanding of the proper care and needs of eggs and live animals. This is a great precursor activity for hatching eggs in class.
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Roots: The Ancestry of Modern People
High schoolers investigate the models for the origin of modern humans and the conditions that facilitate speciation and evolution. The classification and nomenclature of hominid species is also examined.
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Introduction to Archaeology
Students view a PowerPoint presentation called, Archaeological Terms then discuss the job of an archaeologist and new vocabulary. They view the teacher made "artifact grid" and photograph the grid from different angles. They work in...
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Making a Fossilized Egg
Young scholars explore fossils by participating in an in class experiment. For this archaeology lesson, students utilize dough and classroom objects to create fossil imprints after hiding the toy/fossil in the dough egg. Young scholars...
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Transparent Shoebox Dig
Take this simulated archaeological dig one layer at a time with your young pupils to encourage observation, critical thinking, and careful attention. Using a transparent box full of layers of sand and artifacts, pupils examine the...
Channel Islands Film
Cache: Lesson Plan 2 - Grades 4-6
Class members will dig this activity that has them trying their hand at recovering artifacts. Groups are assigned a section of a sandbox, carefully uncover the artifacts in their section, and then develop theories about who might...
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Sunken Slave Ship
Students investigate shipwrecks. For this marine archaeology lesson, students create the site of a shipwreck by using a tub filled with sand and items from a "ship". Students excavate the site and analyze the findings.
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Wreck Detectives
Students investigate shipwrecks. In this marine archaeology lesson ,students collect data and make inferences about the causes of shipwrecks. Students work in groups to create their own model of a shipwreck using clay. Students then...
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Stonehenge: Solving Ancient Mysteries
Students explore archeologists and anthropologists and the tools and methods they use to gather and interpret scientific evidence. They research current archaeological excavations and contact the scientists working at these digs.
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The Forgotten Cities
Students recognize and identify gaps in historical and archaeological evidence and how that evidence is interpreted. They explore the history of the Indus cities and identify what was left behind that survived for archaeologists to find...
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Frosty the Snowman Meets His Demise: An Analogy to Carbon Dating
Students read and discuss an article about carbon dating, then participate in a hands-on lab to discover how carbon dating works. Students also write a letter to a friend explaining the process, and how archeologists use the process to...
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Oceans Away
Young scholars explore oceans. In this science lesson plan, students locate oceans, seas and continents of the world, identify ocean-related occupations, and complete activities pertaining to food chains as well as pollution.
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Saving the Past for the Future
Young scholars discuss an archaeological dilemma. They write a paragraph about possible solutions to the problem.
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Archaeology is ...
Students demonstrate the importance of context for learning about ancient people. They assess the importance of preservation of cultural resources. They exchange papers with a student in class. The students with the paper are responsible...
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How To Think Like An Archaeologist
Students take a field trip to historical Jamestown. Using artifacts given to them, they must identify them and discover who would have used them and for what purpose. They create a database to organize the information and share it with...
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Touch the Past: Archaeology of the Upper Mississippi River Region
Students examine the archeology of the Mississippi River Valley. Using the internet, they expand their research to include how the Native Americans in California used plants to meet their needs. They also research a Native American...
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Archaeology 2500: Texano Weapons
Students listen to oral story describing mystery artifact, work in groups to write descriptive report of artifact, and creatively form hypothesis based purely on misinterpretation. Students then explore and discuss difficulty of...
Time Warp Trio
The Caveman Catastrophe
Young archaeologists study the development of human history, and work in groups to create a timeline that traces the development of humans. Additionally, the groups utilize a very clever graphic organizer embedded in the plan in order to...
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Digging Detectives
Students experience exploring an archaeological site utilizing various archaeological methods and techniques to help them synthesize multiple aspects of past life and culture to today. They explore what an archaeologist can learn from an...
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Contextual Clues
Learners observe and interpret images of artifacts in different contexts in order to recognize importance of leaving artifacts in original context to correctly understand their meaning, and observe what is surrounding object to interpret...
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Can You Dig It?
Learners use a mock archaeological site to dig up artifacts. They read an article about artifacts found in Syria. They develop a list of artifacts that are related to specific sites in the community. They create an exhibition of these...
Ocean Explorer
Looking for Clues
Upper graders become "shipwreck detectives" by studying the debris field from a shipwreck in the Aegean Sea which took place in the 700s. A website is accessed that gives specific information about the debris field, and pairs of...
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Replacing Missing Links in the Evolutionary Chain
Examine the evolution of various species of hominids from their earliest existence approximately 4.5 million years ago to today. In small groups, learners research one of the ten stages of hominid evolution and then create a poster and...