Special Features

Printable Version for your convenience!

Purpose:
To enlighten students as to the varied ways in which a US Atlas or World Atlas can benefit their learning (or just to have fun).

Materials:
A computer for 1-2 children
A reference cd-rom such as a US or World Atlas
A prepared scavenger hunt list

Preparatory Work:
Spend an evening clicking your way through a US or World Atlas, and determine the questions you would like to have the students answer through discovery. The longer you want the activity to take, the more questions you will include.

Join grade-level meetings to find out what regions are being studied in social studies (for the grade you will present this to), and concentrate the focus on those particular areas within the program. This can provide an initiation to a social studies unit, or can simply enrich what is being learned in the regular classroom.

Procedure:
Tell students they are being sent on an adventurous scavenger hunt. They are not to return until they have collected all of the desired information. Of course, you won't be leaving the room to perform this hunt, but it is an exploration regardless!

Hand out the questionnaires, and let the fun begin. Have students load the cd-rom and begin using their resources to find the answers.

Note:
I teach this lesson in a computer lab consisting of 4 stations with 6 computers each. I sometimes give each station a different set of questions, to enhance the learning. All students in each group then present what they learned to the whole class (and to their classroom teacher).

Be sure to include some 'wacky' information to keep the interest of the students. They'll have a ball!

Evaluation:
Monitoring for success within the software as well as completion of scavenger hunt sheet. Students are graded on the accuracy of their findings.

HAVE FUN!!!!!!!

E-Mail E. Wynn!