History of an Archaeology Site
Lesson Plan created by: William Shandor, Miami County Day School, Miami, Florida
NEH Summer Institute for Teachers 2009: “Daily Life in Ancient Times: Archaeology of Israel and Jordan”
By the end of this lesson students will be able to:
Day 1 – Explanation of assignment and introduction to the sites.
Day 2 – Teacher presentation on the five catastrophic scenarios.
Day 3 – Assignment of topics and beginning of research.
Day 4 – Continue with research and model building.
Day 5 – Continue with research, model building and writing.
Day 6 – Presentations to class
Day 7 – Continue with presentations
Day 8 – Finish presentations
Students will take notes on the presentation of the information about the sites and the presentation of the five catastrophic scenarios. Students will need to do more research on both their site and the catastrophic scenarios in order to earn an above average grade for the assignment. Teacher presentations should be general in scope and provide students with a baseline of information on which to proceed.
Students should be encouraged in the writing of the paper to raise and answer questions. A starting point to present as an example would be to consider a more contemporary architectural site such as the Empire State Building and answer the following questions: Who built it? What was it constructed of or from? Why was it built? Where was it constructed? When was it built? How was it built? In many cases this will be the most interesting question as to the older sites. Here they must consider the actual engineering techniques and processes used to move massive amounts of construction material. How do men of knowledge think these difficult tasks that we are in some cases incapable or replicating today done 2000 or more years ago?
Complimentary lessons across divisions include most significantly science and mathematics. Determining the amount of destructive force in a Category 5 hurricane vs. a 7.9 Richter scale earthquake is a math/science question with a math/science answer. Collaboration with both departments for this assignment will be brilliant. Determining the energy output from the Hiroshima bomb is a known and agreed upon scientific fact. Students will have to apply that level of force on the design and engineering of their structure and this could be a very high level mathematical problem involving physics which may be beyond most Social Studies teachers much less our students. The idea is to trigger the inquiry and let them run with the problem. Many will do the minimum but some will surprise us. Additionally there is something fabulous about asking a question in class that you do not know the answer to. It is authentic in a way that we rarely are in the classroom. You can honestly say to the kids you don’t know what would happen if sea levels rose 250 feet in the Mediterranean basin adjacent to the Coliseum in Rome. They will have to use the internet to determine the elevation of the Coliseum and then consider what the effects of this rise would be. Granted many of the answers will be speculation. What have we learned in our time here about archaeology? Everyone is speculating about virtually everything and sometimes you will persuade a consensus of the scholars that your speculation is the most plausible and for a time your idea may be the prevailing “conventional wisdom”. But as sure as the Ptolemaic world view was displaced by the Copernican, what we know as truth today is merely the conventional wisdom of the consensus of the scholars of the age. We should encourage creative solutions to this assignment that apply innovative ideas.
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