Using New Discoveries to Keep History Bubbling

History hits the headlines when archaeologists and others uncover new finds – and the idea of objects coming to light after being buried for hundreds of thousands of years is very exciting. This happens more often than many people imagine so can we share that sense of excitement and discovery with primary and secondary students and how can this fit into the normal run of lessons – and what can be learned from it?

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A WORD version of this activity can be downloaded [ click here ]

Useful archaeological examples from 2014 are shown below.

Using Archaeological Discoveries

Who is this for?

I originally had KS2 in mind as the 2014 National Curriculum introduces periods of history not studied there before – but this could be also used at KS3, GCSE and A level.

See below for brief suggestions.

What do you do?

Show children a picture of an object, place, excavation that’s new – more than one picture if you wish. Then you can enthuse about how wonderful it is in history that new discoveries keep being made and ask ‘what do you think this is?’ and then ‘what questions do you want to ask about this?’ List the questions and discuss possible answers – maybe just picking out one or two to dwell on. You don’t need to know lots yourself – that’s not the point. Rely on what’s on a website or in the paper – even though on most things (like education) such sources of information are notoriously unreliable!

It’s about the excitement of the discovery.

How long will it take?

Maybe as little as 5 or 10 minutes, half an hour at most – it all depends on the class and it’ll take less time if they recognize what you’re doing from previous occasions. You’re definitely not trying to make this into an enquiry or detailed study.

Of course this means escaping from the tyranny of the scheme of work and being willing to make up lost ground in your scheme of work on later occasions – but maybe the reward of creating moments of real intrigue are worthwhile?

Why do this?

Here are several answers – we might even call them objectives!

1. Practice in asking questions and suggesting answers

These are key historical skills that often don’t get enough time. For example:

• Who used this? [rich or poor, men, women or children, etc]

• Where was it found?

• Why was it lost/buried?

• What was it used for?

• How old was it? Which period is it from?

• How was it found?

• What does it tell us about the people who used it?

• Etc etc – just get children used to the idea that being good at history includes asking questions and suggesting possible answers.

If you want to give children practice at asking questions, suggesting answers and generally puzzling out what can be learned from objects you can find a range of images and discussion at the British Museum’s Teaching History with 100 objects project at teachinghistory100.org

2. Developing historical vocabulary

All those ‘what, why, when?’ words above – plus all the tentative language ‘possibly’ ‘could be’ ‘hypothesise’ etc plus chronological terms – see below.

3. Reinforcing chronological understanding

When you’ve revealed what the item is move onto where it fits into the big sweep of time – it’s Roman so where does that place it on a timeline? This could be about dates but at KS2 it’s as much about which periods came before and after. Children build their chronological knowledge very effectively from this kind of regular, quick reinforcement.

At KS3 spending a few minutes on a find or finds from pre-1066 periods will help embed and retain chronological understanding of such periods.

4. Understanding that history isn’t all done and dusted

Children tend to assume that our knowledge of the past is complete so this is a good way of getting across the fact that it isn’t – new discoveries are often being made. With older students, maybe at KS3 and especially at GCSE and A level the focus could be on new interpretations by historians as well as archaeological discoveries.

KS2 classes could set up a noticeboard for reports, articles, photos etc on discoveries as they come in and be encouraged to write blogs etc.

5. Thinking about dilemmas

Ask children to think about what would do if they found something that seemed valuable – what happens in these cases?

See the work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme at finds.org.uk