WEA Archaeological Resources

In 2016 Wessex Archaeology signed a memorandum of understanding with the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) setting out our joint aim of building a lasting link between learning and heritage.

This partnership was the result of a lot of groundwork (no digging!) done by our Community & Education Officer, working with the WEA’s tutors to develop new ways of encouraging a wider public engagement with our cultural heritage. Specific lessons were created using archaeology-themed resources, which offer adult learners the opportunity to develop an appreciation of heritage and archaeology – through maths, english and art. 

This set of resources has been developed by Wessex Archaeology for the WEA. 

English - Resource Contents

• Archaeology Wordsearch.
• Key words - Introduces potentially new vocabulary and involves sentence construction.
• Story of an artefact - The activity involves creative writing and research.
• Animal Skeletons - “Activities for using animal skeletons” provides ideas for activities.

Maths - Resource Contents

• Understanding a matrix - The activity involves ordering of numbers and working with shapes and diagrams. 
• Coordinates - The activity involves map reading and plotting of coordinates.
• Plot a pot - The activity is based around enlargement using grids.
• Use the Pony skeleton to demonstrate scaling. There is the sheet Scaling the burial on to your gridded paper which advises how to do scaling and gives a few questions. There is the pony skeleton with a grid over the top Pony Skeleton with grid and a grid with the drawing of the skeleton started Grid for pony skeleton.

Art - Resource Contents

• Plot a pot - The activity is based around enlargement using grids.
• Activity sheet recreating an AngloSaxon pot - Gives step by step instructions on how to create an Anglo-Saxon pot.
• AngloSaxon Pots - Examples of Anglo-Saxon pottery
• Pony Skeleton - Record the burial through accurately drawing it.

Science - Resource Contents

• Animal Skeletons folder - 
  “Activities for using animal skeletons” 
  provides ideas for activities.

Extras - Resource Contents

• Colouring sheets - A variety of colouring sheets showing different time periods.
• Chronology - A list of time period categories
• Wessex videos - Links to a couple of videos which could be used to generate discussion around archaeology.
• Section - An example of an archaeological section