PACOIMA : Sixth-Graders Digging Into Archeology

Rather than reading about ancient civilizations, sixth-graders at Telfair Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima are brandishing trowels and sifting through a make-believe archeological site for clues to the past.

Since last week, 23 students from teacher Michael West’s classroom have painstakingly excavated six dirt pits to unearth 2,000-year-old artifacts representing the remains of an ancient village.

West places actual artifacts from his field work in the pits every morning to await discovery by the students.

The junior archeologists, who found seashells, fish and animal bones, pottery shards and fire pits, use the clues to speculate about the people that left them behind.

“This looks like an ax. They used it to kill (animals) with big bones, maybe deer or big mammals,” guessed Miguel Trujillo, 11, after finding a stone ax in one of the pits Monday.

“They were crab eaters,” said Omar Escalante, 12, holding a crab claw in his hand. “They had a lot to do with the sea.”

The mini-archeological dig is the brainchild of West, who worked as an archeologist for 30 years in Peru and Mexico before becoming a teacher. The dig is part of an integrated curriculum unit he developed to encourage problem-solving by combining the students’ knowledge of math, science and social studies with critical thinking skills.

“This is a reproduction of what we did on the field, only on a smaller scale,” said West. Once students unearth the materials, they cart them back to the classroom for analysis.

“It’s fun to discover things,” said Cecilia Hernandez, 13. “We’re learning how we could do archeology.”