Post by title1parent on Sept 10, 2008 5:31:23 GMT -5
www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1154273,6_1_NA10_STILL_S1.article
Brownie archeologists
Still students search for hidden treasure in treats
September 10, 2008Recommend
By Tim Waldorf twaldorf@scn1.com
Sixth-graders know brownies when they see them. So Still Middle School teacher Jennifer Combs' social studies students were excited Tuesday when their teacher whipped out a pan of the chocolatey treats.
"This is dirt, people, not brownies," Coombs said.
For the 10th consecutive year, Coombs was leading her class in a "brownie excavation" activity as part of a unit of study on ancient civilizations. For this activity, Coombs baked a batch of brownies that had "artifacts" hidden in them. For instance, bits of toothpicks were wood remains, red hots were charcoal deposits, chalk pieces were shards of pottery, and tiny wads of tin foil were arrowheads.
Coombs then divided her class into pairs, and her pan of brownies into excavation plots and had each pair of students slowly and carefully "excavate" a plot from the site - their brownie - with their excavation tools - toothpicks.
"We are going to be a team of archeologists, and we are going to have to dig on our plots of land," Coombs said.
And Coombs urged students at the Aurora school in Indian Prairie School District 204 to dig carefully because they'd only get one brownie and one shot to excavate it like a proper archeologist.
"Once we dig in there, it is destroyed," she said. "We can't go back and re-create what was going on."
But, she noted, they can piece together a portrait of the brownie civilizations through proper excavation of their respective plots of the pan. In fact, that was their assignment.
As students found artifacts, they documented their findings on a grid, which they then used to write a report. In the report, they were to make inferences as to what they thought this brownie civilization was like based on what they found in their brownies and where they found it.
And while Coombs plotted the location of each artifact, placing them in distinct patterns that indicate people may have lived in one area of the brownie pan, and done battle in another, surprises did pop up.
"Do chocolate chips count?" asked student Vijit Singh as he dug through the dessert.
"No," said Coombs, "that's just rocky land."
Brownie archeologists
Still students search for hidden treasure in treats
September 10, 2008Recommend
By Tim Waldorf twaldorf@scn1.com
Sixth-graders know brownies when they see them. So Still Middle School teacher Jennifer Combs' social studies students were excited Tuesday when their teacher whipped out a pan of the chocolatey treats.
"This is dirt, people, not brownies," Coombs said.
For the 10th consecutive year, Coombs was leading her class in a "brownie excavation" activity as part of a unit of study on ancient civilizations. For this activity, Coombs baked a batch of brownies that had "artifacts" hidden in them. For instance, bits of toothpicks were wood remains, red hots were charcoal deposits, chalk pieces were shards of pottery, and tiny wads of tin foil were arrowheads.
Coombs then divided her class into pairs, and her pan of brownies into excavation plots and had each pair of students slowly and carefully "excavate" a plot from the site - their brownie - with their excavation tools - toothpicks.
"We are going to be a team of archeologists, and we are going to have to dig on our plots of land," Coombs said.
And Coombs urged students at the Aurora school in Indian Prairie School District 204 to dig carefully because they'd only get one brownie and one shot to excavate it like a proper archeologist.
"Once we dig in there, it is destroyed," she said. "We can't go back and re-create what was going on."
But, she noted, they can piece together a portrait of the brownie civilizations through proper excavation of their respective plots of the pan. In fact, that was their assignment.
As students found artifacts, they documented their findings on a grid, which they then used to write a report. In the report, they were to make inferences as to what they thought this brownie civilization was like based on what they found in their brownies and where they found it.
And while Coombs plotted the location of each artifact, placing them in distinct patterns that indicate people may have lived in one area of the brownie pan, and done battle in another, surprises did pop up.
"Do chocolate chips count?" asked student Vijit Singh as he dug through the dessert.
"No," said Coombs, "that's just rocky land."