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Anthropology is Elemental
  • Cultural Anthropology
    • Creating Culture
    • Seeing Culture
    • Documenting Culture: Ethnography
  • Linguistic Anthropology
    • Creating a Clan Language
  • Archaeology
    • Archaeological Methods
    • Understanding Artifacts
  • Biological Anthropology
    • Playful Primates
    • Evolution
    • Osteology
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Spring 2018: Primates at TMSE

12/10/2018

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In class this week we taught the last lesson of the semester, Primates. The lesson began with a review of the Archaeology lesson by asking what archaeology was. Archaeology is the study of physical remains left by past humans. After the review, we went into the Primates lesson. The Primates lesson included a review of what primates
are: monkeys, apes, and Prosimians. I then went into the differences between monkeys, apes, and humans. Monkeys are generally smaller than apes and humans and have tails. Apes are generally the largest of the three and are covered in body hair; however, they do not have tails. Humans have little to no body hair and do not have tails. I then went over the difference between great apes and lesser apes. Great apes include gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and humans. While lesser apes include gibbons. The difference between greater and lesser apes lies in their size. Greater apes are bigger than lesser apes. My lesson then went into the differences between the species of monkeys including the differences between New World monkeys and Old World monkeys. New World monkeys live in the Americas or the New World and generally have prehensile tails, meaning tails that can grasp like an extra hand or foot. These monkeys are also generally arboreal meaning they live in trees. Old World monkeys on the other hand live in the Old World which includes Asia, Africa, Europe, and India. These monkeys are typically terrestrial or ground dwelling and do not have prehensile tails. After the lesson, we went into our activities. For this lesson I had planned three activities: two to be carried out in class and one to take home as a fun activity to do with parents and siblings. For the first activity, we played capture the resources. This is played like capture the flag. Our groups were scavenging for resources like primates would in the wild. Since primates are not bipedal or walk on two legs, the kids could only “walk” on two feet and one hand while collecting resources with one hand. The group with the most resources won the game. For the next activity “Feast like a Beast” we had the kids try things primates would eat. This included various fruits, vegetables, and proteins. The kids tried guava, strawberries, mango, radish, dragon fruit, clams, and snails. The last activity was testing binocular vision. This was a handout the kids could take home with them. It included instructions on how to test your binocular vision, which is where your two eyes overlap and see the same things.


To see more lessons like this one on Culture, check out our lesson plan pages on Primates.

To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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Spring 2018: Race at TMSE

12/3/2018

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​This week in class we learned about race. We started by learning how skin color evolved. Darker skin evolved to protect our bodies form UV radiation, and lighter skin evolved so that some UV radiation could still be absorbed so that we could make vitamin D. This means that skin color is clinal, or that it varies gradually from light to dark and there are no strict dividing lines between groups, like there are between blood groups. But biologically speaking, there are no human races. This is because in biology, a race means the same as a subspecies, and humans are more alike than we are different, so we have no subspecies. So race today is seen as a cultural construct, defined by the group that uses it. This means that it can change over time and between different regions and countries. For our activity, we grouped ourselves based on preferences and genetic traits, and each time, one group was randomly picked to do an exercise, or receive a prize. The lesson and activity showed the class that skin color, while important, is not the only important thing about us, and we shouldn’t use it to judge other people.


To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
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Spring 2018: Gender at TMSE

11/26/2018

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 This week in our Anthropology is Elemental, our lesson focused on gender and gender
roles. It began by defining stereotypes: “a widely held but oversimplified belief about a person or a thing”. This idea was concretized by asking students for examples of stereotypes about dogs, cats, and then people who ride motorcycles, to allow them to work through somewhat for themselves what does and does not count as a stereotype. We were able to clarify the differences between a stereotype and a rumor, and then made sure to point out that although something might be a stereotype, it does not mean that every member of X group conforms (for example, not all cats are mean, not all dogs like water, not all bikers wear leather). Once we had the idea of stereotypes down, we moved on to gender roles. Gender roles were basically defined as the “stereotypical” things that men and women were expected to do and enjoy based on their culture. We placed heavy emphasis on the fact that this is culture-dependant. After going over the most common gender roles (men work outside the home, women take care of the children and the household, etc.), we then went over a few places around the world and in time where the gender roles are not defined as they are in America and in most of the world, including the Chambri people of New Guinea who were studied extensively by Margaret Mead, and the Kibbutzim tribes of Israel, in which no real division of labor exists. To wrap up the presentation we quickly went over a few examples of third-genders around the world. These were presented as expressions of self in situations where a person’s desires and identity does not match up with the cultural expectations of them in regards to their gender performance.

The activity for this lesson, as with every lesson, was designed to reinforce the ideas in the lesson. In this case, that was that stereotypes, and by extension gender roles, are not always accurate and in many cases can be restrictive. We first gave each student two small slips of paper (a 3x5 index card cut in half) and asked them to write a stereotype about girls on one slip and a stereotype about boys on the other. When they were done, we collected the slips and put them all into a bucket. All the students stood in a group in the center of the room. One by one stereotypes were drawn at random from the slips taken from the students. Then the students were told to separate based on their preferences. For example, if a stereotype was that boys like to play outside, the students went to one side of the room if they enjoy outside play and the other if they preferred playing inside. They then had to guess whether this was a boy or a girl stereotype (which they often got wrong), and with every example we pointed out that no group was comprised of totally boys or totally girls. This helped to make sure they understood the main lesson objective, which is that stereotypes are at best inaccurate, and at worst harmful.


To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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Spring 2018: Evolution and Osteology at TMSE

11/19/2018

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,​This week we learned about evolution and osteology. We started by reviewing CLAP and learning more about the fourth letter: Physical, or Biological, Anthropology. Physical anthropologists study the biology and behavior of humans and how those characteristics evolved. Then we learned more about evolution, or change over time in groups of organisms in response to the environment. We learned the four ways evolution works: mutation, natural selection, gene flow, and genetic drift. Then we learned that osteology, or the study of bones, can be a good way of “seeing” evolution. We focused on how humans are related to apes and other primates, and they have been evolving just as long as us to be good at what they do, just as we are good at what  we do. We also went over the idea that there are many extinct human ancestors. Then we went through 5 traits on the skull that can be useful in identifying human from nonhuman skulls: the location of the foramen magnum (hole on the bottom of the skull where the spine attaches), small teeth, no sagittal crest (ridge along the mid line of the top of the skull), a vertical face, and the presence of a chin. Then for our activity, we went through each of these characteristics with several skull casts of humans and human relatives to determine where those skulls fit on the primate family tree.


To see more lessons like this one on Culture, check out our lesson plan pages on Evolution and Osteology.

To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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Spring 2018: Archaeology at TMSE

11/12/2018

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The lesson this week in our Anthropology is Elemental course covered the third of our four anthropological subfields, Archaeology. First, we defined archaeology as “the study of human history through excavation and analysis of artifacts and other physical remains”. Physical remains of human history were categorized as anything from man-made portable objects, to entire structures or complexes, to human remains. From here we moved into more specific term-defining, beginning with the differences between an artifact and an ecofact. An artifact is something that that modified by humans for use by humans, or something that was physically changed by a person for the specific purpose of being used. This could be anything from an elaborate burial mask down to a stick whittled to a sharp point. An ecofact, on the other hand, is an item which indicates human settlement or inhabitants, but was not directly modified by the human for use. These are things such as empty shells indicating people were there eating clams, or charcoal, which is an unintentional result from intentional human fire. We then moved on to define sites and features. A site encompasses the entire area of interest to archaeologists. A feature is just one element of an archaeological site. A feature is characterized by an inability to move it, whether due to size, state of disrepair, or something like dirt which shows evidence of a post-hole. These things are aspects of a site that cannot be removed from the surrounding area and taken back to a lab for studying, but can still hold important information about the site itself.

​Following this, we went over the ways in which archaeologists discover and locate sites of interest, such as the Global Imaging System (GIS) and Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR). The students were shown various methods used during excavation, such as the creation of grids and the use of surveying before actual digging can begin. The concept of stratification was explained using the example of a laundry basket, which holds more recent clothes at the top and clothes worn longer ago at the bottom. Finally, we discussed Celsa, a first-century Roman city in Spain, identifying aspects of the site as features or artifacts.

The activity for this lesson was Garbology. Each group was given a large bag of trash taken from a specific place (kitchen, home office, public space). They were told to sort the trash in using whatever categories they thought best fit the assemblage. Most groups began sorting by material. Some groups also sorted by things like use or even edibility. Once sorted, the students were asked to identify where they thought the trash came from, and what they thought the trash implied about the people who produced it, like where they might live or how they get their food. Students were also encouraged to think about their own material remains and how they might be interpreted by future archaeologists with no cultural context on which to base their ideas.



To see more lessons like this one on Culture, check out our lesson plan pages on Archaeological Methods and Understanding Artifacts.

To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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Spring 2018: Linguistics at TMSE

11/5/2018

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       In class this week we taught the second lesson of the semester, Linguistics. The lesson began with a review of the Culture lesson by asking the children what culture was. Culture is our actions and behaviors and what’s important to us in our day to day lives. After the review, the lesson went to an introduction of linguistic anthropology. This introduction included teaching the students the difference between linguistics and linguistic anthropology. Linguistics studies more semantics (the vocabulary meaning of a word and its place in a sentence) while linguistic anthropology studies the pragmatics (the context of words in sentences). Then we went into a basic definition of communication and the purpose of communication. Communication is a way of expressing your thoughts to others in an effective way and its purpose is interaction, cooperation, connection, and expression of needs and desires. The purpose of communication was reinforced by different examples, one being the expression of needs and desires. We went over the cries of babies. Babies have different cries for different needs. One cry can mean baby is hungry, while a different cry can mean that baby needs a diaper change. We then went into dialects and taught the students about different dialects in the US and in Spain, our sister country. Once the lesson was finished, we started our activity which was communication charades. This activity consisted of giving new meanings to the everyday words, “frogs,” “squirrels,” and “turtles.” Each group then had to act out the meanings to the new words and have the other groups guess what the meaning was based on the skit that the other groups acted out.



To see more lessons like this one on Culture, check out our lesson plan pages on Linguistics.

To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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Spring 2018: Culture at TMSE

10/17/2018

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 Hello parents, teachers, and supporters! This blog post marks the beginning of our first ever series documenting a full semester of lessons! These lessons were originally developed and taught in the Spring semester of 2018 by Kira Yancey, Julia Sponholtz, and Breaunna Tucker.

We started this semester with a quick overview of anthropology as the study of humans, and established the four subfields of anthropology as Culture, Linguistics, Archaeology, and Physical using the acronym "CLAP" (students “clapped it out”, meaning the class clapped along as we said aloud each subfield). We included a brief description of each subfield, and then moved on to the full lesson covering culture. We then went through a variety of examples of ways in which people “show” their culture, including food, art, clothing, rituals, and holidays, making sure to ask the students for examples before providing them directly. The students did very well in being able to give us examples when asked, even often giving us the exact example we had provided on the slide before being shown. Following this explanation of culture, we introduced the students to our “sister country” for the semester, Spain. We provided them with some factoids about the country and a few different aspects of Spanish culture, such as the heavy emphasis on both immediate and extended family. We introduced them to the idea of different regions of Spain being controlled by powerful families, and from there broke the students up into their reinos (kingdoms) or familias. Each group represented one of three powerful Spanish ruling families: the Castille, the Aragon, and the Navarra. Once in our groups, the students made family trees where they graphed their own families or created a new fictional family with the group members present. Students also established a set of "values" or traditions that they would like to be important in their own family "culture". These included things like kindness, celebrating holidays, caring for animals, or recycling. To end, students decorated family crests with the colors of their familias and symbols representative of the values they chose for their groups. More can be seen of this in the vlog below.


To see more lessons like this one on Culture, check out our lesson plan pages on Creating Culture, Seeing Culture, or Documenting Culture using Ethnography.

To contact us with questions, concerns, or anything else, go to our contact page.

​
To see and download the exact powerpoint, lesson plan, and activity used in this blog, you can do so by clicking the links below!
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New lesson! Sifting Through the Sands of Time

4/10/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

We have a new Archaeology lesson available! Our first lesson was about an important artifact: pottery. This new lesson is about how we go about finding these material remains: excavation.

Students at Tuscaloosa Magnet School Elementary got to excavate boxes of sand that had artifacts, fossils, and other items in them. 
This is an easy lesson to set up because all you need is sand, something to hold the sand, and things to put in the sand that kids can dig up! 
Access our downloadable content here.
If you don't have access to downloads, click here.
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New Lesson Plans Available Without Download

3/29/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

We've added three lesson plans that are available for quick access. These can be accessed by those who can't access downloadable content or those working on a tablet. 

Click on the lesson titles to access them:
Seeing Culture
Playful Primates
Evolution

We hope that these additions are helpful. Please feel free to comment with questions or suggestions. 

Keep checking in for more updates. Our next goal is to add lesson plans for a Linguistic Anthropology lesson about language, an excavation lesson in Archaeology, and a museum lesson in cultural anthropology. 
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New Biological Anthropology Lesson: Evolution

3/29/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

One of our most important biological anthropology lessons, evolution, is now up and running. This week, we taught students at Arcadia about natural selection, mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift. 

We challenged the students to create adaptations for existing animals in a new environment. You can access the lesson and activity page by clicking here.
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New Lesson Available: Seeing Culture

3/21/2017

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A few weeks ago, students at Tuscaloosa Magnet School Elementary learned about different forms of body adornment in our Seeing Culture lesson. 

Our Body Modifications lesson is a great way to review what ethnocentrism is and how we can avoid it, because body modifications vary widely between cultures. 

For the activity, the students were able to mark themselves with temporary tattoos. 
Tuscaloosa Magnet School Elementary students pose for the camera to show off their new body modifications
To download our lesson plan and presentation, read through our Seeing Culture activity page, or access the lesson plan directly here!


To read more about TMSE's experience, read our blog post: "Body Modification at TMSE by Labethany Bradford"
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Lesson Plans Available Without Download

3/21/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

We are working to make our materials as widely available as possible. Previously, all our lesson plans were only available by download through Microsoft Word. 
We've now added text versions of all the lesson plans for those on tablets or without the ability to download.

They can be accessed here:
Creating Culture
Documenting Culture
Documenting the Past

Soon, we will add textual versions of our activities to each of these, so keep watching our site for updates!
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New Lesson: Playful Primates

3/8/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

Last week at Tuscaloosa Magnet School Elementary, the students learned about primate behavior in our Playful Primates lesson. 

They learn about primate diet (and get to sample some delicious primate cuisine: bugs!) and locomotion. The students must collect food items during the Meddling Monkeys Scavenger hunt while knuckle walking like a gorilla. 
Students brace for eating their first cricket. Some are more enthusiastic than others
Students knuckle walking across the classroom while searching for primate food items



​To access all the activity materials, read our Playful Primates​ activity page. 
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Increasing Our Accessibility Through Captions

3/8/2017

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by Kelsey Kennedy

Anthropology and Biological Sciences

As you may have noticed, we are starting to add video content to our website. It is our mission to make these materials more accessible to our audience. This includes adding captions to our videos. 

This is a learning process for all of us as we navigate the world of videography, so thank you in advance for being patient as we upload more content. 

Our ultimate goal is to caption all of our videos, including captioned translations into different languages. 

We're excited about expanding our website. Thank you for visiting our site and be sure to check back, as we make weekly updates. 

In the meantime, check out our newest lesson, Playful Primates and learn about a popular activity with the students: eating bugs.
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Documenting Culture Vlog

3/6/2017

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by Hannah Tytus

Anthropology & Communications Studies

Creating Clans and Coloring Culture

 Take a closer look inside the Arcadia Bosses-one of the clans from Arcadia Elementary School. They are explaining their cultural values to the other clan. 

​This video corresponds to the Documenting Culture: What is Ethnography?  and the Creating Culture: Making a Clan activities. By filming the students as they present their culture, we are creating an ethnography by documenting their culture in action. 
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  • Cultural Anthropology
    • Creating Culture
    • Seeing Culture
    • Documenting Culture: Ethnography
  • Linguistic Anthropology
    • Creating a Clan Language
  • Archaeology
    • Archaeological Methods
    • Understanding Artifacts
  • Biological Anthropology
    • Playful Primates
    • Evolution
    • Osteology
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