This unit will encompass an array of activities that will enhance student critical thinking skills through the use of artifacts. Students will understand what an artifact is and its place in past, present and future history. They will understand that any object of everyday life, works of art, and architecture, anything that has been made or used by a human being, is an artifact. Students will make inferences and judgments about different artifacts and come to their own conclusions as to their purposes. They will be able to see an object from a variety of perspectives. By making connections to their position in history, they will see that history is ultimately about them, as people.
The students will use their imaginations to put a story around an artifact. Using different learning styles, they will see that history is a process - not a product - and that our understanding of it is changing as our thoughts on the human experience evolve. The students will be able to build their higher order thinking skills by focusing on the "top end" of Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy and to analyze, evaluate and create. They will be able to see that problem solving is a form of higher order thinking and that most inventions, indeed most human creations of any kind were meant to solve some kind of problem.