–The students need to understand the basic difference between the concept of history (based on written records of human activities in the past) and prehistory (past events before writing was introduced in a given culture or society). They should be shown examples of history and prehistory resources such as chronicles, annals, documents, letters, inscriptions/meaningful symbols versus archaeological artefacts, excavations, tools, oral traditions, myths, legends, past customs or tra-ditions. The next step is to introduce and discuss with students how modern science (e.g. archae-ology, genetics/human DNA studies or carbon dating techniques of fossils to determine their age, etc.) helps us to look into the “Dark Ages”. It is very welcome and recommendable to create a little bit of “mysterious and magical” atmosphere to the topic by mentioning ancient legends, myths or folklore stories together with music pieces and projected images in the background (thus activating multi-sensory perception of the students). The teacher should rather simplify the scien-tific terms and/or avoid overburdening the students with too much of “a scientific talk” depending on their age, general knowledge and cognitive skills. Activities and their web resources : (to be transferred to and/or modified into Canva History tem-plates in the development process) – Presentation...
–The students need to understand the basic difference between the concept of history (based on written records of human activities in the past) and prehistory (past events before writing was introduced in a given culture or society). They should be shown examples of history and prehistory resources such as chronicles, annals, documents, letters, inscriptions/meaningful symbols versus archaeological artefacts, excavations, tools, oral traditions, myths, legends, past customs or tra-ditions. The next step is to introduce and discuss with students how modern science (e.g. archae-ology, genetics/human DNA studies or carbon dating techniques of fossils to determine their age, etc.) helps us to look into the “Dark Ages”. It is very welcome and recommendable to create a little bit of “mysterious and magical” atmosphere to the topic by mentioning ancient legends, myths or folklore stories together with music pieces and projected images in the background (thus activating multi-sensory perception of the students). The teacher should rather simplify the scien-tific terms and/or avoid overburdening the students with too much of “a scientific talk” depending on their age, general knowledge and cognitive skills.
Activities and their web resources : (to be transferred to and/or modified into Canva History tem-plates in the development process)
– Presentation
Intro: Presentation of the world’s oldest known boomerang that has been found in a Polish cave (Jaskinia Obłazowa), some 23,000 years after the object was made from the tusk of a mammoth. A video clip made by “The Prehistory Guys” and a visit to “Małopolska Virtual Museums” will help the students to discover this spectacular object and fascinating facts about it. And you would probably expect it to be found rather in … (Most people assume it’s Australia – contrary to popular belief boomerangs were used on almost all continents)
The link above presents a discussion between two enthusiasts of prehistory sharing their knowledge and exciting comments on the Obłazowa Cave boomerang found in southern Poland that is the oldest human artefact of this kind in the whole world. The students are supposed to watch as well as read and listen to this extract and express their short comments afterwards.
Pre – Lesson Activities