Instructional Objectives
The effective teaching of archaeology begins long before the students bring in artifacts from home or board the bus to visit an archaeological site. It begins when the teacher selects and/or writes a set of educational objectives for her students. We suggest organizing the objective around an unmeasurable core objective: The students will appreciate why and how archaeology helps us understand the past.The National Park Service provides a variety of material useful for teaching about the past. Their Teaching With Historic Places includes 55 lesson plans. You can get a description and ordering information from the National Park Service
Another important resource for teachers is Discovering Our Past through Historical Archaeology: A Teacher's Curriculum for Grades 4 - 5. This guide was developed for use in the Archaeological Education Center at Fort Frederica, but contains much material useful for other sites. It is packed with lessons and activities and is organized into four units:
- Fundamental Concepts
- The students learn the basic concepts and values of archaeology: culture, observation/inference, context, chronology, classification, scientific method and why the past is important.
- The Process of Archaeology
- The students learn how archaeologists work: finding, excavating, keeping records, analyzing, and interpreting what they find.
- Laboratory Work and Conservation Treatment
- The students learn how to analyze, interpret and conserve artifacts.
- Issues in Archaeology
- The students examine their own beliefs and values about the past and how they have changed or developed from exposure to archaeology.