Chagrin Valley Times Features Grade Seven Dig at Butler Campus

6/1/2018

The Chagrin Valley Times visited Laurel's Butler Campus in May to observe The Dig, an annual Grade Seven immersion unit that aims to replicate the Whittlesey tribe site.

Hope Murphy, Director of Curriculum for Grades K-8, was included in the piece and stated The Dig was "brought to Laurel about 15 years ago when the school in Shaker Heights purchased the Butler Campus in Russell Township to promote outdoor activities. They lay out the site in grid lines and use the tools that archaeologists use. They collect artifacts and chart the data to put together a map of the dig site, which then gives them the ability to analyze how the artifacts fell in a meaningful way." The Grade Seven teachers collaborated with specialists from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to prepare the mock site and the artifacts, which display cut marks to indicate that stone tools were used to process them. In preparation for The Dig, this year's students heard from Barbara Brown, a paleontologist and Laurel alum who helped discover Lucy, a female pre-hominin of the species Australopithecus afarensis that dates to 3.2 million years old. Click here to read the full story.

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Chagrin Valley Times Features Grade Seven Dig at Butler Campus

Lyman Campus | Laurel School

Butler Campus | Laurel School