 |
| Grace Curtin-Fiano directs her annual Dig Day at Windsor Middle School near Santa Rosa. |
If you want your students to dig history, sometimes you have to get them to dig up history, says Grace Curtin-Fiano, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at Windsor Middle School near Santa Rosa.
“We wanted to create an event that would bring the seventh grade together regardless of whether they were GATE students, special education students or English language learners,” says Curtin-Fiano. “We wanted to get them excited about history. And we thought that the best way to do this would be to simulate an archaeological dig where they could use all the information they had studied about the Incas, Mayans and Aztecs.”
She and Don Rasmussen, both members of the Windsor District Education Association, started the annual archaeological dig 11 years ago. The dig has since been expanded to include all seventh-graders and recently won a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association. (Rasmussen now teaches sixth grade.)
“It’s really a team effort among teachers,” says Curtin-Fiano. “And also for students.”
 |
| Teams of students painstakingly excavate the treasures crafted and buried by other teams, giving them an excuse to study yet more cultures to understand what they’ve found. |
Preparation begins as soon as school opens in the fall. After extensively researching the three cultures, students choose an event of great magnitude from that era — such as the arrival of the Spanish or the creation of the Aztec calendar — and create ancient “artifacts,” including tools, jewelry, knives, feather work or textiles. Students must decide whether their artifacts were used before, during or after the pivotal event and write papers describing their artifacts and the roles they played in history.
Then comes the dirty work: Students bury the items in one of 10 archaeological “pits” on the school grounds. Artifacts from before the event are buried at the bottom, those from the same time period are in the middle and post-event artifacts are closer to the top. The rule is that nobody excavates their own artifacts: Students who studied the Aztecs may dig up Inca artifacts and vice versa to learn about the other cultures.
Students are divided into teams and assigned roles for Dig Day, which might include measuring artifacts, recording what’s found, sketching them and putting on labels. Just like real archaeologists, students painstakingly remove layers of dirt with paint brushes. Then artifacts are brought back to class, where students determine the culture that the items came from as well as the time period and any important events that occurred.
“The purpose is to make these civilizations come to life and understand their contributions to ancient history, as well as understand the science and importance of archaeology,” says Curtin-Fiano. “The kids are incredibly excited about it. Many find they have a lot more artistic ability than they thought when they create pottery, textiles or carvings. I had one young man make a chest of gold this year and another student made a flute. It’s amazing what they come up with.”
“I think it was pretty awesome,” says seventh-grader Erick Zamora. “It was fun and it made learning easy. For my artifact I made an Aztec calendar, which was pretty hard, but I managed to get it done. And I learned how the solar calendar worked, which was interesting.”
“It was a lot easier to remember important things about cultures because of this hands-on experience,” says classmate Kara Ferro.
“It was fun and so different from just reading from a history book,” says Samuel Haley. “I really enjoyed learning about the class structure of the Aztecs. A nobleman could drop down to a commoner if he didn’t fulfill his duties; commoners could capture people in battle and become noblemen; slaves could become commoners if their master died or they worked off their debt. They were a brutal people with sacrifices every day. It would have been a very interesting life.”
