Archaeology in the school
The educational services provided are founded upon an educational philosophy which seeks to engage, stimulate and challenge learners. Inquiry and discovery-based learning lies at the heart of learning programmes and teaching sessions designed and provided by Breochloch.
Learning activities and programmes of study will be flexible and responsive to meet the needs and desires of individual clients. There is much scope for learning outside the classroom. Archaeology is viewed as being an exciting and dynamic field of study with massive cross-curricula study potential.
The word ARCHAEOLOGY does not appear in the National Curriculum. However:
- It is a tremendous aid to understanding many areas of the curriculum.
- It involves kinaesthetic learning and so reaches those children who find verbal learning difficult.
- It accesses many of the higher thinking and working skills.
- It is easy to use many of the co-operative learning structures that help children to learn.
INTELLECTUAL PROCESSES
Archaeology always involves us:
- Analysing what we know already
- Using this knowledge to make hypotheses
- Asking questions that we hope our investigations will answer
- Discovering the evidence
- Revisiting our original hypotheses
- Testing them against what we have discovered
- Working forward to a new set of questions/hypotheses
This process can be repeated and a genuine understanding of the site and the intellectual processes involved emerges from the work.
This is all done against the background that we do not know what we will find until we uncover it.
It is a genuine research and enquiry process that cannot be faked. Children appreciate the concrete nature of this and that they will be the first to find out real evidence for real questions.Physically doing the work means that they have ownership of whatever is discovered and a real interest in analysing their discoveries and embedding them into their understanding.