Abstract
Artifacts offer opportunities for students to move beyond reading about the past to investigating evidence from it. In this article, we describe a museum-based artifact inquiry activity developed with teacher candidates and offers practical ways to adapt the activity for K–12 interdisciplinary classrooms. Beginning with a single artifact, learners make careful observations, distinguish observation from inference, develop compelling and supporting questions, investigate additional sources, construct evidence-based claims, and consider perspectives and limitations of the available evidence. The activity aligns with the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework Inquiry Arc and connects with the Georgia Standards of Excellence in social studies and science. Although originally implemented through a museum experience, the inquiry process can also be used with digital collections, reproductions, family objects, and other locally available resources.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Valenzuela, Tina and Coyne, Jaime L.
(2026)
"Artifacts Inquiry for Social Studies and Science Classrooms,"
Teaching Social Studies in the Peach State: Vol. 4:
Iss.
2, Article 5.
Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sspeach/vol4/iss2/5
