INTRODUCTION

Can you imagine how people lived during the Stone Age period?
What did they eat, what tools did they use and how, where did they live?
The Stone Age is a prehistoric cultural stage, or it can be categorized as a level of human development and it lasted approximately 3.4 million years.
It Is defined by the creation and use of tools made of stones.

The Stone Age is divided into three periods:

1. Paleolithic,
2. Mesolithic,
3. replace bullets
4. Neolithic.

These periods are based on the level of sophistication in the adaptation and use of tools.

Figure 1: Prehistoric man,

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stone-age-painting.jpg 

TASK

You are chosen among all the schools of your country to create learning material for the other schools and teach the students about the Stone Age.
There will be three teams, one for each Stone Age period. The teams’ members will aim to teach the other students with an essay written like they are one of the people living that period. Each team will consist of experts on one of the following topics: people, life in the then society, nutrition, tools. Merging all the topics you will create the essay.

PROCESS

1. Make your research

For you to create your special part of your team’s presentation you need to answer some of the following question and any other question you think it is relevant. Do not be limited by the following questions.

• What kind of people lived during this period?
• What is the name of the oldest hominid form ever found and how old is it?
• What did they wear?
• Did early man live in societies or were they nomadic?
• What tools did they use and for what purposes?
• Is there any evidence of fire and if yes how was it used?
• What was the food they eat and how did they acquire it?
• What climate changes occurred during the Stone Ages?
• What type of shelters did they use?

Use the following resources or any resource that might help you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFGra2TiTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgd5Mt25koI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH_nCZL7-us
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agRKo_sEb4I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFE3t7qNJSs
https://www.theschoolrun.com/homework-help/the-stone-age
https://www.funkidslive.com/learn/top-10-facts/top-10-facts-about-the-stone-age/
https://www.britannica.com/event/Stone-Age
https://www.twinkl.co.za/homework-help/history-homework-help/the-stone-age-facts-for-kids/what-was-the-stone-age
https://www.penfield.edu/webpages/jgiotto/onlinetextbook.cfm?subpage=1525824

2. Create a presentation for your team.

For your team to be informed and learn about your topic (people, life in the then society, nutrition, or tools), you will create a presentation using text, images, videos or whatever you think is necessary.

3. Write the essay.

Now that you have studied the presentations for your team members and you have all the necessary information for your assigned period, you will work with all your team members and create an essay. You will write about your experience as a human living during the Stone Age, and you will inform your audience what you do, how you feel and what you are thinking.
Create cards with images and text that will help your audience understand your essay.

4. Extra:

Did you know that archaeologists have identified 4 types of art during the Stone Age period? These are:

• Petroglyphs: rock carvings and engravings,
• Pictographs: ideograms or symbols, cave painting,
• prehistoric sculpture: small totemic statuettes known as Venus Figurines,
• megalithic art: works associated with arrangements of stones.

Do you think that you and your classmates can find out similarities between Stone Age art and art as we know it now? How is Stone Age art related to human writing? Why do we look at cave art and artefacts to learn about the Stone Age?

RESOURCES

For further reference on Stone Age art

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23230990-700-in-search-of-the-very-first-coded-symbols/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/prehistoric-art-in-modern-and-contemporary-creations/7QVBYIHNu32FGA?hl=en
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journey-oldest-cave-paintings-world-180957685/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdlQxISNpwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMf4ZN31-7Q
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stone_Age_art
http://artisticselection.blogspot.com/2014/12/history-of-art-stone-age.html

CONCLUSION

The students will learn about the Stone Age period, the earliest humans and their lifestyle, and this period’s greater impact on society and civilizations.
Also, students are expected to develop the following:

• Research skills.
• Writing skills.
• Discussing skills.
• Decision making skills.
• Research skills.
• Communication.

Evaluation of learning achievements

In this section we will not dive very deep into the underlying educational theories about evaluation and testing: there’s too much out there than we could possibly cover in this small project report.

Instead, we want to concentrate on procedures that enable both students/pupils and their teachers to establish if the learning goals of the Webquest were achieved and, if so, to what extent. We recommend teachers make use of a combined evaluation procedure, that consists of:

1. Statements by learners (after being asked to do so)
   • telling what they learned about the subject (knowledge-oriented self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know that …
   • telling what he/she learned about herself/himself (formative evaluation, in this case, diagnostic self-evaluation): now (after going through the Webquest) I know about myself that I …
     This pair of basic statements add up to a so-called learner report, in which the pupil/student reflects on what the Webquest brought him/her in terms of acquired knowledge and new personal views and attitudes concerning the subject.

   For instance:

   • ‘I learned that in medieval times the hygiene of people was hardly a concern which helped to let epidemic diseases like the Plague cause so many casualties’ Or:
   • ‘I learned the facts and I know the earth is warming, but I cannot understand why people were so stupid to pollute the world and let it warm up so much.
   • ‘I learned from the information about diseases that this subject is more appealing to me than I would expect in advance: maybe I should consider a medical career’. Or:
     ‘The Webquests confirms what I thought already: I could not care less about the climate and global warming. In fact, I thought it was all a hoax and I still do!’

   This kind of assessment seems more subjective than it actually is: in his standard work on testing and evaluation (and much more), simply called Methodology (1974), Prof. A.D. de Groot described how consistent the student’s self-evaluations appeared to be: when asked again after 5 or 10 years, their evaluation would almost be the same. De Groot advised teachers to use the learner report as a start for joint evaluations, striving for consensus between teacher and student/pupil about the learning outcomes and their value for the learner, but also compared with the learning objectives as stated in the curriculum.

2. The learning achievements are visible in the output produced by the students: it is physical evidence: reports, answers to questions asked in the Webquest, presentations, and performance during presentations (preferably recorded). The teacher completes an evaluation grid stating clearly what the learning outcomes for the student/pupil are. The categories in the grid can be modified by the teacher to cover more precisely the content of a Webquest.

   >We advise teachers to use the grid to start a joint evaluation discussion, aiming at consensus or at least understanding between the teacher and the student/pupil about the learning outcomes: were they achieved (as planned in the curriculum and communicated before the Webquest started) and to what extent? To communicate the learning goals clearly before any learning activity starts, is a transparency requirement that is widely acknowledged in the educational community. The history of making learning objectives explicit goes back to the evaluation ‘Bible’ by Bloom, Hastings and Madaus: ‘Handbook on formative and summative evaluation of student learning’ (1971), a standard work that also served as inspiration for the earlier mentioned Prof. De Groot.

The procedure also applies when students/pupils have worked together on a Webquest. The teacher will ask questions about individual contributions: ‘What did you find? What part did you write? How did you find the illustrations? Who made  the final presentation?’

All the evidence (of learning efforts and outcomes plus joint evaluations) is preferably stored in the learning portfolio of the student, or in any other suitable storage system (folders with written or printed documents, online collection of files, etcetera ).

Changes in personal points of view and feelings are harder to value and here the consensus between teacher and student/pupil about experiences during the learning process provides essential insights.

The grid below gives an example of how the evaluation of the learning process and achievements can be shaped: what kind of reactions to the Webquest does the teacher expect and how valuable are they? Is the teacher capable to explain the value or score allocated to answers or presentations given by pupils? Does the pupil/student understand the evaluation outcomes, and does he/she agree? If an agreement (consensus is not possible, it is still the teacher who decides how to value the student’s work.

Please note that the text in the grid addresses the pupil/student directly: this is important and it is in fact a prerequisite for using such an evaluation grid: it is specifically meant to enable a discussion of learning results between teacher and student and not to communicate learning achievements of learners to others who had no direct role in the Webquest.

Evaluation Grid