QRchaeology: Jamestown

The struggle of every teacher is to make their subjects relevant and real to students.  Throughout my 15 year teaching career, I have sought to engage students in their learning through a variety of highly interactive activities.  Wow, seriously 15?

For our study of Jamestown, I "hired" my students to serve as field and forensic archaeologists to survey both remains and relics found at the site.  With each student having an Ipad this year, it was the perfect opportunity to QR it up!

The site consisted of two grave sites and two trash pits.  Each site had a collection of QR codes and other physical artifacts.  I bought two skeletons at the local Halloween shop to add a bit of macabre to the mix and outlined each grave and trash pit with painters tape.  The QR codes either contained links to images of unearthed items or text clues about the condition of the body.

As they progressed to each site, they were given a series of guiding questions such as;

1.  Based upon the items what can you say about their daily life?  
2.  How did they survive?
3. What evidence do you have that Jamestown began to prosper?
4.  Based upon the examination of the bodies and their burial, what can you say about their status in Jamestown?  Can you determine a cause of death?  (The male was found with a bullet embedded in his leg and died of blood loss.

As with each lesson, you just never know how it will be received.  Sometimes what we think is brilliant can sometimes totally flop with the kids.  When we began the activity this morning I braced myself for blank looks, but they embraced the dig with an incredible amount of curiosity and interest.  Also, they interpreted their findings with a great deal of accuracy which gave them all a nice ego boost.  At the end I designated them all "Student Archaeologists: First Class" which got a hearty round of cheers.

The Jamestown Rediscovery website was primarily used to find the relics and the burials .  If you would like to use the QR Codes that I created, feel free to email me at oneifbylandadventures@gmail.com.  I'm working on getting a more cleaned up version at my website.  Please visit!  I'm always looking for feedback.