Archeology 101

This week, we learned what archeologists do (and what makes them different from paleontologists). Our first practice was to "excavate" a trash can. The students knew it was from a room in the school but not which room (though we did rule out classrooms). Mrs. A. carefully pulled each artifact from the trash can. At first, it was tough to tell from the evidence where exactly the trash can might have come from. Some cut out papers and a Diet Coke bottle led us to believe it might be from the teacher's room, but when a mailing for a lice comb addressed to Barbara Naser was revealed, many kids thought perhaps the trash can was from the nurse's office. Further artifacts yielded more definitive clues - a visitor pass, a sign-out sheet and a Lilja parking pass pointed our archeologists confident that this trash can had come from the front office! This exercise helped the kids to see what tricky work archeology can be - how hard it is to learn about ancient civilizations when we only have things that were left behind. 

Our second archeological simulation was in the dig process itself. Fifty pennies were scattered in one area of the outdoor classroom for kids to find. They were not buried per se, but their copper coloring blended perfectly into the mulch so you had to be looking carefully. Also, too much activity would actually bury the pennies further as kids kicked up mulch to cover what was previously sitting on top of the mulch. This was a fun exercise and an educational one too - we only found about forty of the pennies! The last few are still out there...maybe a future Lilja student will find them 100 years from now...

Lastly, we took a walk down the Lilja School trail with our "tools" (spoons) to do a little active digging to see what the ground would reveal. Unfortunately, our Native American early civilizations used mainly plant and animal matter to make their tools, clothing and weapons - materials that would all rot away with the passage of time. Though their stone tools (axe heads and arrows) would have been preserved under layers of earth. While we did not find anything like that, the kids did find some spectacular stones! 

Next week, we will be moving on to examining the artifacts and photographs of items found in an actual dig - that of Olynthus. The students are very excited to see what we will learn about life in Ancient Greece.

Author's Celebration!

This week brought us to the close of our Punctuation Study. Throughout this study, our young authors have had choice of genre for the books they wrote (nonfiction, fiction, graphic novel, fantasy) but whatever the type of book, their task was to use punctuation effectively and purposefully so that readers know how our books should be read. 

At the start of the unit, students went through books in search of any markings that were not letters and sought to determine what these marks were telling us. Kids found periods, exclamation points, question marks, ellipsis, parentheses, quotation marks, commas, apostrophes, colons and more! 

We have been working on what these writing "road signs" communicate to our readers (pause here, read this sentence with strong feeling, this is where a character's voice is speaking) and being more attentive to them as we both read and write books. 

Throughout our study, the 1-2 kids learned how to use punctuation to make their writing more powerful and give it more voice. In our Author's Celebration, kids shared their books with a buddy and then pointed out pieces of punctuation they were particularly proud of making effective use of in their books. 

While this close up study of punctuation is coming to a close, the expectations for endmarks, appropriate use of capital letters,  and intentional use of other punctuation are expected to continue! Check out the pictures below from our Author's Share Celebration in the Music Room!