[This post features one Grade 8 Individuals & Societies unit.]
This term we have been learning about the beginnings of modern man and farming in the Neolithic period. To give the students some insights into the changes that occurred when hunter gatherers moved towards farming. We did some Neolithic experiments and learned, through experiential archaeology, how to draw cave paintings and cut up a (pomelo) rabbit with stone tools from 3500 BC. The kids enjoyed killing "Chi-Chi" and her sisters, ate the fruit and made pomelo leather hats for themselves. It was brutal and informative at the same time!
The problems early Homo Sapiens experienced led on to our unit task on innovation and how man faced up to problems of drought and climate change in the Younger Dryas period (10,500 - 9,500 BC) and first developed agriculture through necessity, the Neolithic revolution that followed was the start of a period of rapid change for mankind and saw the human species become the most prominent species on the Earth.
Inspired by H. G. Wells' novel, The Time Machine, the summative task asked students to work in a science fiction scenario when scientists at the Large Hadron Collider project in France managed to open a rift in time and space and planned to send a researcher / volunteer back to the Neolithic period, 12,000 years ago, along with a printed guidebook that detailed how to achieve four major innovations to help advance the achievements of mankind by at least 2000 years, by introducing Neolithic man to new and useful technology.
It was a fun assignment and the students suddenly became innovation teachers and understood how important that early technology has now become.