- Hello, scholars.

Welcome to second grade on Read, Write, Roar.

Today, we are going to use pictures of artifacts and maps from the book "Can you dig it: archeology lost and found in the sands of time" to help us answer our big questions, how do people study the past, and what can be learned by studying artifacts from the past?

We are also going to be writing sentences with multisyllabic words ending with S. So scholars, you're going to need to go ahead and get your paper, get yourself something to write with, and let's get ready to Read, Write, Roar.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Michigan department of education, the state of Michigan, and the WK Kellogg foundation.

Additional support by, and by viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hello scholars.

I'm Mrs. Z-K, and today we are going to write sentences.

Today we are going to change words that are in their singular form into their plural form.

Let's talk about that a little bit.

So singular, if a word is in its singular form, it means that it is just saying that there is one of that thing.

For an example, like finger, that's a singular form of that word.

And it's just talking about one.

So if you were just talking about one finger, ooh, I hurt my finger, you would use this form, singular form of word.

But if I wanted to talk about more than one finger, I would have to change that word, and I would have to change it into its plural form, okay?

And that would just mean more than one.

It could mean two fingers.

It could mean 10 fingers, right?

The way I change that is by adding an S at the end.

With some words, sometimes you have to add ES, or change the Y to I, and then add ES.

But the words we're going to work with today, they are multisyllabic, more than one syllable, and they will only be needing an S in order to make it plural, okay?

All right.

So for an example, remember that word finger.

I want to make it plural in order to make a sentence to talk about more than one finger.

So I have, monkeys have five finger?

That doesn't make sense, right?

They have five fingers, and I have to add the S to make it plural.

So monkeys have five fingers on each hand, like humans.

Do you notice any other words in this sentence that are also plural?

They end with an S and they mean more than one?

You see the S in monkeys?

It's talking about more than one monkey, right?

Yes, so monkeys have five fingers on each hand, like humans.

Humans also ends with an S, you're right!

And it's just talking about more than one.

All right scholars, we have a word bank today.

Make sure you have your paper and pencil handy.

We are going to be writing.

All right, scholars, let's go ahead and read the words that are in our word box.

We have material, building, layer, and measurement.

Nice work.

All right, we are going to change these words from their singular form into their plural form, all right?

So some of these words could be verbs, but we are going to make sure that they are nouns 'cause we are changing them to plural, meaning more than one, okay?

So if we were to say, we're going to write a sentence about material.

Well, we wanna talk about more than one material.

We wanna talk about materials, right?

So we are going to add that S at the end, nice work.

So if I add an S at the end of material, I now have materials.

And now we can make a sentence about materials.

Artifacts.

Artifacts, artifacts.

Can be made from different materials.

So as you notice, here's our word, materials.

As you notice, our theme is going to be about archeology.

So when I make up my sentences with these words, I am going to theme them around the theme of archeology.

So in archeology, you could find artifacts, also plural, and those artifacts could be made outta different materials, right?

All right, so now we are going to move to our next sentence.

I'm going to need your help.

All right, here's our word, singular form.

Building.

If I wanna talk about more than one building, I need to do what to the word?

Change it to its plural form.

What am I going to add at the end of my word?

An S. Now remember, building, you could build something and that would be a verb, but we're talking about a plural form of something.

So we're talking about the noun, the thing, right?

So it could be a building or it could be buildings, right?

So we're talking about more than one building.

All right, so if we're thinking about studying the past.

An archeologist may have visited many places in order to find what they're looking for, right?

So maybe they have visited many buildings, right?

And those could be present or past, right?

Like museums.

So as an archeologist, we could say we have visited or I have visited many buildings looking for what?

What could we be looking for?

Okay, I have visited many buildings.

And that's our word here.

All right, let's keep going.

Our next word is layer.

Okay, so let's think about that word, layer.

You could layer a cake, right?

That would be a verb.

Or we could talk about how many layers are in the cake, right, the thing.

And so if we want to talk about more than one layer, and I've already said it, we are going to add that S at the end and change it to layers, layers.

Okay, so if we are an archeologist, if we are writing this sentence as an archeologist, and we know that they dig up things from the past, right?

Fossils and treasures and artifacts, maybe they dig through many what?

Many layers of the ground, right?

Let's see if we can write that into a sentence.

So I dig through many layers, right?

That would work.

Sentence three.

I dig through many layers.

I'm gonna underline the word that we used out of our bank.

All right scholars, we have one more word in our word bank that is singular still, and we need to change it to plural.

The word is measurement.

What are we going to do to this word to change it to a plural word?

We're going to add an S at the end, nice.

So now it is measurements.

As an archeologist we might take measurements of what?

Ooh, fossils, that's a good one, right?

Take measurements of fossils.

So you might take many measurements or lots of measurements on one fossil, right?

Might see how long it is, how round it is, how thick it is.

Yes, okay, so let's use that.

So I took lots of measurements.

I took lots of measurements of the fossil I found, nice, period.

All right, awesome work scholars.

So we have changed words from their singular form.

Meaning when they're only talking about one thing.

And we have changed them to their plural form by adding an S. Plural words mean more than one.

So in our sentences, we have made those words plural to talk about more than one thing.

Let's go ahead and reread our sentences that we wrote.

All right, artifacts can be made from different materials, more than one material.

Number two, I have visited many buildings.

You have visited more than one building.

Number three, I dig through many layers.

How many layers?

We don't know, but there was more than one, right?

Digging through the ground.

And number four, I took lots of measurements of the fossil I found.

Remember that as you read and as you write, if you are talking about more than one thing, that that is its plural form, and it will often end in an S, an ES, or an IES.

- Hi scholars, I'm Mrs. Fuller.

Today we're gonna be reading a book called "Can you dig it: archeology lost and found in the sands of time", written by Amanda Baker, and read with permission from Panda Archeology.

As we read today, I would like you to listen for information that'll help us to answer our two big questions.

First, how do people study the past?

And our second big question, what can be learned by studying artifacts from the past?

Archeology is all about answering the question, how did past people live?

Have you ever wondered what an Neanderthal in Spain ate for dinner?

An archeologist can tell you that.

We take samples of dirt or use animal bones with teeth marks to figure it out.

How did the Egyptians build the pyramids?

Well, now we know that they probably poured water in front of the stones as they pulled them to create less friction against the ground.

That made it easier to move the giant stones up a smooth sand ramp to the tops of the pyramids.

What did ancient houses look like?

In areas in the middle east, archeologists find the remains of mud rock houses.

In other areas, people built their homes out of wood.

All over the world, we have found that many humans spent time in caves for shelter.

Some people have lived in giant cities like Cahokia, found today in Missouri, or Nineveh in modern Mosul.

Others lived in small communities, like the families living at Must Farm in England, or in hunter gatherer groups like the aboriginal people in Australia.

How did people get the materials they needed for tools and housing?

Trade has always been an important part of most human societies, and archeologists are often able to trace the extent of trade routes by recording where specific artifact types, raw materials, or food seeds have been found.

For example, archeologists know that precious blue rocks called lapis lazuli were traded from Afghanistan to Egypt, beginning around 5,000 years ago.

We know this because lapis lazuli is a rare stone found only in specific locations naturally.

So when it shows up hundreds and thousands of miles away, we know people must have taken it there.

Another material we can easily trace is obsidian, which is a black volcanic glass that makes excellent blades.

Obsidian is found only near volcanoes, so obsidian blades found in non-volcanic areas also shows the movement of people and materials.

By tracing the movement of artifacts, technology, and ancient seeds, archeologists get a better understanding of the movements and interactions of ancient people.

The earliest writing systems were used to record trade and other economic interactions on clay tablets.

Large libraries of detailed transaction records, like a credit card statement, were preserved when the buildings housing them burned down.

These records show the importance of keeping track of what goods came from where on a daily basis.

The making of king Tutankhamen's golden mask.

The golden mask of king Tutankhamen, also known as king Tut, highlights the importance of trade and shows the long distances materials moved during the time he lived.

Obsidian was imported from the Mediterranean, and was used here to create the pupils of his eyes.

Lapis lazuli was brought from Afghanistan and represented life-giving water and the sky.

Carnelian was important because it represented the sun.

Turquoise represented the goddess Hathor, and came from the mines in Sinai.

How do archeologists learn so much about people who no longer live?

We study the things we find in the ground that were left there long ago.

When people live somewhere, their activities leave traces behind.

This could be parts of the walls from collapsed houses, bones of people, which are often left in some sort of grave, or items of daily use that manage to be preserved through time like pots and pans or arrowheads.

Structural remains can be clearly defined, or they can be difficult to detect.

Temples and palaces in Egypt are often easy to detect for several reasons.

They are typically found on the edges of the desert, where few people can live.

So the ancient buildings have never been built over by later generations of Egyptians.

Also, they are constructed out of materials such as limestone, that endure in the dry conditions of the desert.

Ancient Egyptians constructed their houses out of mud brick, which is dried mud that easily breaks down when it gets wet.

Between the movement of the Nile river across its bed and people living in the same locations for thousands of years, it is very difficult to find their ancient homes, while we easily find the remains of the stone palaces.

Several cultures across North America and northern Europe build their homes out of material such as wood, which degrades over time, and degrades means to break down, leaving behind only traces of the structure ever having been there.

When looking for these types of homes, archeologists look for stains in the dirt where organic material breaks down differently than the surrounding dirt, which leaves behind different colored dirt.

Whether a site has well preserved foundations and walls or has buildings recognized through stains, archeologists use these as references to create a site plan, which allows us to understand the whole site rather than just individual structures.

In the pictures, you can see a picture of the site map with the numbers and a picture of the real site.

Can you match the rooms from the site plan of Noesis to the real site on the next page?

Archeologists also learn a lot about past people by studying their bones.

We can tell what types of food they ate regularly through isotope analysis, which identifies the elements that are present in the bones, especially in teeth.

Bones can also tell us what type of lifestyle someone led.

Have you ever broke in a bone?

Doctors today take x-rays to look at your bones and can see injuries that happened in the past.

Trained archeologists can look carefully at ancient bones and tell what kind of injuries a person got while living, as well as whether he or she suffered from certain diseases.

This allows us to understand how that person lived and sometimes how they died.

Archeologists uncovered many victims of the Vesuvius eruption in Pompeii by pouring plaster into holes left in the volcanic flow.

Human remains can also tell us about the culture a person lived in.

Were they buried in a ritual manner or left in the wild?

Were they buried with items of wealth?

What did the people who love the deceased find important to take with them after they died?

The answers to these questions give us great insight into how societies viewed death, and sometimes an afterlife.

When we excavate or dig, archeologists also find items that people used while they were living.

Take a moment to think about some of the things you have at home that you use every day.

Dishes, clothes, brushes, tables and chairs, stoves and ovens, bathrooms, pencils, cars and bicycles, books, computers, and many other things.

Someday, many years from now, future archeologists may be excavating your house to see how you lived, and what would they find?

That's right, many of the things you use every day.

And that is exactly what archeologists find when they excavate ancient homes.

We find pots, pans, and bowls from the kitchen, ancient tablets that are like the books you read, remains of carts and horses for traveling, sometimes even leftover dinner.

We regularly find art projects, tools, and even board games.

So how can you get involved in archeology today?

There are so many different ways you can get involved, from reading more about archeology, to visiting a museum with unique artifacts, to joining an excavation near you.

I started by reading everything I got my hands on about history and archeology and different cultures: books, magazines, and news articles.

These are all easy to find online and in libraries.

Another way to learn more about archeology is to go to a museum near your home or visit one when your family is traveling.

Museums are one of the best places to learn about the history of where you are, and there are more museums out there than you might imagine.

Visit museums big and small to see actual artifacts excavated by archeologists around the world.

You can also join an excavation near you.

Community archeology is one of the most exciting trends in archeology right now, where archeologists either ask the local community to come out and learn how to excavate at a local site, or just show off everything they are learning about what happened in the past where you live.

It is one of the best ways to dig up the history around you.

And don't forget international archeology day, which is held on the third Saturday of October.

Many archeological organizations invite guests of all ages to participate in archeology-related activities across the globe.

Make sure you find some fun archeology near you.

As you can see, there are many different ways to study our human past.

We have learned that archeology is the study of the human past through the excavation or digging of sites where people lived, and that archeologists are the scientists who study archeology.

We learned about the process of excavation and about some of the things archeologists find at a site.

We also learned some of the different ways that scientists learn the details about the history of a site.

I have a fun activity that I want you to try.

If you look in the picture, you can see that when an archeologist plans an excavation, they map it out in a grid pattern.

And as they dig in each of the grids, they would map out their results on a paper grid that matches the layout of their excavation plan.

So here's the project.

If an archeologist were to excavate your bedroom what would they learn about you?

Think about the layout of your bedroom.

Where are the doors and windows?

Where is your bed?

What other items in your bedroom?

Use the grid system to make a map of your bedroom.

So if you have a piece of paper, you could draw out a grid system or you could just draw a map of your bedroom, but it's important that you document what the layout of your bedroom is and where certain items are found.

What would be found in each grid square if an archeologist excavated your bedroom?

Have fun planning out the map and the excavation plan for your bedroom.

Thank you so much for learning with us today, scholars.

I'll see you next time on Read, Write, Roar.

- [Announcer] This program is made possible in part by the Michigan department of education, the state of Michigan, and the WK Kellogg foundation.

Additional support by, and by viewers like you, thank you.

(upbeat music)