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Class Visits
Explore the Subfields Activities and Workshops
WAO is proud to offer anthropology and archaeology workshops to students of any age in London and the surrounding area. In the past, we have partnered with local schools and organizations, such as the Canadian Association for Girls in Science, to conduct classroom visits and host events at Western University. We aim to provide engaging, hands-on experiences to introduce students to the discipline. For high school students, we can offer lectures and workshops to give a taste of the university experience. Event content, duration, and location are flexible and can be tailored to meet the needs of individual groups or classes. If you’re interested in partnering with Outreach to organize an event or workshop, please reach out to us at anthoutreachuwo@gmail.com. More images of our class visits are posted on our Instagram @WesternAnthrOutreach. Some of our workshops include (this is not an extensive list):
Hominin Evolution
Gain hands-on experience measuring the skulls of different primates and hominin ancestors to document the changes to our cranium throughout human evolution. Learn to measure species femora to understand how our height and body mass have changed over millions of years.
Age Range: Appropriate for all ages.
Primatology: Tracing Primate Lineage
Using traits that primatologists study to better understand primate adaptation and behaviour, work with your peers to create a primate lineage to understand the relationship between living primates based on their similarities and differences.
Age Range: Appropriate for all ages.
Paleopathology: Studying Diseases on the Human Skeleton
Learn how to document and describe diseases that manifest on the human skeleton and work through matching the disease on the skeleton to known cases. You’ll also have the opportunity to chat with graduate students who are experts in paleopathology.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
Forensics: The Stories Bones Can Tell
Think like a forensic anthropologist and create an osteobiobiography. You’ll estimate the sex and age of individuals from their skeletons, calculate their living stature from their remains, and perform trauma analysis on the skeletons.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
Cookie Excavations: How Do We Record Archaeological Sites?
Learn the fundamentals of archaeological excavation and recording by carefully “excavating” chocolate-chip cookies. Practice identifying layers, mapping finds, and recording observations to understand how archaeologists document sites without destroying the evidence they contain.
Age Range: Appropriate for all ages.
Garbology: What Can We Learn From What People Throw Away?
Explore how everyday waste can reveal patterns of behaviour, consumption, and culture. Work with real and simulated refuse to analyze what discarded materials can tell us about people’s habits, values, and lifestyles - past and present.
Age Range: Suitable for students in middle school and up.
Get Sifty
Experience the excitement of archaeological discovery by excavating hidden materials from a sand context. Learn how to sift through artifacts and the importance of using different-sized meshes. Get the chance to document your findings!
Age Range: Suitable for elementary-aged students and younger.
Zooarchaeology
Handle replicas of animal bones and learn how zooarchaeologists identify species and skeletal elements from archaeological sites.
Age Range: Appropriate for all ages.
Typology: Classifying Ontario Archaeological Materials
Learn how archaeologists organize and classify artifacts using typology. Work with real artifacts from southwestern Ontario to identify patterns in form, style, and use, and discover how typological analysis helps archaeologists understand technological and cultural changes over time.
Age Range: Appropriate for all ages.
Mini-Ethnographies: Conducting Fieldwork in the Classroom
Students face challenges every day. Can sociocultural anthropology help us understand them? Become an ethnographer and investigate a problem experienced by you and your peers to explore how anthropological approaches can offer insight.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
Virtual Ethnographic Observations
Become an anthropologist and conduct a virtual ethnographic observation. Choose from different themes to explore how culture and social interaction are studied in digital spaces.
EXAMPLE 1: We are what, and how, we eat
Examine food and eating from a holistic anthropological perspective and explore why food is central to understanding human culture and behaviour.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
What is up with Lunch?
Investigate lunch culture at your school by stepping into the role of a sociocultural anthropologist. Working in groups, you will take on specific roles (map maker, note taker, presenter) to study how, where, and with whom students eat lunch. Create maps of the lunchroom and other eating spaces, code your observations, and record group discussions to explore what everyday food practices reveal about school culture.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
The Inside Scoop
You will all use the sociocultural anthropology skills you’ve learned to conduct observations at a field site. Spend 30 minutes observing and taking notes, recording what you see and hear to practice how anthropologists document social behaviour and everyday interactions.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
The Way You Text
Think like a linguistic anthropologist as you analyze the text messages you send and receive. Examine how often you use emojis, abbreviations, initialisms, and slang, and consider whether you communicate differently with parents, friends, or teachers. Reflect on what these patterns reveal about how language is used and adapted in digital communication.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
How Do You Speak?
Many people grow up using more than one language or style of speech. In this activity, you will reflect on how the wya you speak changes when interacting with friends, parents, siblings, and teachers. Consider how word choice, slang, and tone shifts across contexts, and explore what these patterns reveal about language, identity, and social relationships.
Age Range: Appropriate for high school age students.
We offer a variety of additional activities for students. These include career panels featuring graduate students, professors, and industry professionals who share their career pathways in archaeology. We also offer guest lectures led by graduate students and faculty that showcase how anthropological and archaeological techniques are used to address real-world questions. Past lecture topics have included Plagues and Pandemics, The Irish Famine, Mummies of Ancient Egypt, and Geophysics and Remote Sensing in Archaeology, and we are happy to tailor these talks to fit your classroom needs.
We are open to working with groups to develop new activities to fit your requests! Please reach out to us at anthoutreachuwo@gmail.com.