PLYMOUTH — A recent Nestle Toll House TV promo called chocolate chip cookies “the original way to share love.” On the other hand, sixth grade history teachers at Colonial Middle School saw the cookie world’s most popular entries in way more practical terms when they reimagined them as archeological sites for students confined to virtual classes before Colonial School District’s hybrid sessions began.
That said, while today’s pros were oohing and aahing about the medieval Carmelite monastery ruins unearthed at a demolished parking garage in Gloucester, England, and the 800-plus ancient tombs revealed by northern China’s Jing-Hang Grand Canal, some 300 CMS students were learning about the past by scratching and picking their way through the strata of Chips Ahoy Candy Blast cookies. Cookies crumbled, they reported their findings to teachers Mary Dicciani, Bob Guzik, Carolyn Miller and Melanie Sherer.
“The students excavated their sites – the cookie – by using toothpicks, wooden dowels or forks to carefully extract the chips – fossils and artifacts – to simulate the patience and effort it takes for anthropologists to make amazing archeological finds around the world,” Dicciani explains. “The students created detailed lab reports, which included a hypothesis about what historically occurred at their excavation sites – for example, who lived there and the kinds of lives they led – based on the evidence collected.”
At these unique dig sites, yellow-coated candy chips represented pottery shards; blue chips, stones and tool flakes; green chips, food remains; red chips, shells; brown chips, bones; and orange chips, fur.
According to Dicciani, student analysis of these “material remains” ranged from evidence of a post-plague site in Europe to a pioneer settlement adjacent to CSD’s Conshohocken-Plymouth-Whitemarsh boundaries.
Sixth-grader Jackson Gordy traced his findings to “Italy from 2,000 years ago.”
“The Bubonic Plague had struck, and there were many bones inside of the catacombs,” Gordy deduced. “The plague killed many, and there were close to 30 skeletons in there. A lot were missing or decomposed. We had even found tools in there. Pottery shards, too.”
Gracie Kerns’ discovery pointed mere miles away.
“I think my excavation site belonged to pioneers…at Valley Green,” she wrote. “I found some food remains which could have been theirs, pottery shards that they could have used for bowls or plates, stone weapons that could have been used to hunt animals, and bones that were the remains of the animal they could have hunted. The shell I found could have been used as jewelry.”
Not surprisingly, the CMS students were “super excited” about their cookie digs. But, Dicciani adds, serious thought to CSD’s overall approach to education underpinned the exercise and “focused planning and detailed communication with parents helped make the Cookie Excavation Lab a huge success.”
“This activity incorporated STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics) concepts of hands-on learning, interdisciplinary lessons and making connections to the real world…and Career Readiness initiatives,” she says.
Student assessment of the assignment – kicked off with the energizing theme song from the Indiana Jones movie franchise’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – bore that out.
“We don’t really know how people lived a long time ago,” said sixth-grader Amelia Johnson. “When we find artifacts from then, we know a little bit more about how they lived.”
“I now have a new appreciation for archeologists,” added Taylor Bryan. “I think they need a lot of patience. It was really hard trying to get the chips out in one piece.”
Although the cookie digs have been a CMS mainstay for a number of years (with adjustments made for kids with food allergies and gluten issues, Dicciani notes), CSD’s opening weeks in pandemic-triggered virtual mode posed new challenges.
“Most of the families were able to purchase or share cookies, but I delivered cookies to a few of the families who weren’t able to get them for their children…and my colleagues made cookies available for parent pick-up to any student in need,” Dicciani says. “It would have been quite easy to omit this activity from the pandemic/virtual school year, but we chose not to sacrifice fun. Teachers are doing this every single day – trying to figure out how to provide creative, collaborative and engaging lessons and activities virtually. It’s hard, but we make it happen (even though) the learning curve for teachers during the pandemic is pretty steep. We’ve had to navigate the world of technology like never before. This activity was a victory in the face of a COVID start.”
The Link LonkOctober 27, 2020 at 11:21PM
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CMS students go digging with cookies - The Times Herald
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