Happy teacher comments on the STEM Archaeology Workshop

This year Rhiannon, one of the postgraduate coordinators for SHARE with Schools, proposed and developed a brand STEM Archaeology Workshop, with a brand new toolkit (the presentations, information packs and boxes of things we use to make our deliveries so brilliant). The workshop aims to link the Humanities and Science (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) in a fun and interactive way. We want to show that Science is not constrained to the traditional subjects and that Archaeology is more than just artefacts and mud. It does this by features a fun mix of learning methods, including presentations and object handling, and gives pupils the chance to turn into archaeologist detectives to uncover the stories behind burial deposits (well, OK, toy skeletons in a shoebox).

One of the first schools lucky enough to experience the new STEM Archaeology Workshop was the class of Ms Roberts-Ablett, Head of KS2 (transition) and KS3 at Fitzalan High School, Cardiff. Ms Roberts-Ablett wrote to us, saying “We were all hugely impressed with this unit. One of the staff that attended runs our archaeology club at school and so would be really keen to be involved again. I’d love for you to be able to come back and do the same again next year too.”

“The pupils said it was the best sessions they had all day! It was so interesting for them and so different from what they would normally do at school as well as opening their eyes to how history really works so would absolutely recommend it to other schools.”

We’re really pleased at such glowing and positive feedback, especially for a brand new workshop being rolled out alongside the tried and tested SHARE with Schools stalwarts. The volunteers that went out to deliver it said they had a lot of fun doing so, and that they were impressed with how engaged the class were on with the sciency bits of the session. Looks like there’s some budding archaeologists in West Cardiff!