teacher

The New Hampshire WebQuestTeacher Page

The NH WebQuest is designed for 4th grade Social Studies by Karen LaRue

klarue@sau29.k12.nh.us

The purpose of this web quest is to provide students with a better understanding of the state of New Hampshire and the counties that make it up while engaging students in a creative and perhaps unusual learning forum. From the beginning they are asked to forget the perceptions that they think they know and be open minded to other possibilities. They must imagine that they have just arrived in New Hampshire from another planet (Mars) and that they have no previous knowledge of their new environment. Because they may never be able to leave New Hampshire they need to become well educated about their new surroundings.

In creating this web quest I have striven to meet National Educational Standards in the areas of Social Studies, Information Literacy, Technology, and Language Arts. I have used the New Hampshire SAU 29 Social Studies Continum as a guide which follows New Hampshire state standards. I used Bernie Dodges template, which allows for easy navigation within the site. The Introduction portion is just that, and is used to draw the students in, the Task portion explains to the students what they will be doing, and the Process section is how they will accomplish those tasks in a step-by-step fashion. Also included is an Evaluation section that explains to the students what is expected of them and how they will be graded. The Conclusion portion wraps up their learning experience and can be used to send them off in new directions. If you have any good suggestions for links that might work well here please email me.

I chose links for this web quest that I thought would be reliable, with current information, and relevant to 4th graders. Many of the links could be used as portals to more information regarding the study of New Hampshire. I have varied the resources and activities, and will include some suggestions here that would afford further flexibility. The web quest is designed to be completed in steps, this allows students to work independently at their own pace. Being familiar with it yourself and knowing some basic navigational techniques will allow for a smooth and successful completion of this unit.

Step 1 requires use of the NH Almanac link and its sub links to acquire information, answer certain questions and form the information into a friendly letter.
Step 2 requires the students to identify their given county on a NH map and uses a question/answer format to find specific information regarding it. In this step students will use links to NH newspapers. To expedite their research discuss possible key words that will help them, such as, headlines, local news, community calendars, welcome to..., local business or industry, work force, etc.
The links for Step 3 can be difficult to decipher. I used a fill in the blank worksheet so that they can just plug in the information and then you can help them interpret the data. Actually, the information there is given in a straightforward manner, but there is a lot of irrelevant information that might be overwhelming to them. The worksheet also has a map for them to draw in their county and identify the state's borders.
Step 4 allows students to show their creative side by making a brochure of the information they have learned during their quest.
Step 5 is the grand finale and a time for discussion where students share their work with their comrades and make judgments about the quality of living in the different regions of NH. Have students brainstorm and discuss necessary characteristics of the human habitat that would affect their decision to live somewhere.

Possible variations

To keep tabs on the students progress use some sort of correspondence between you as "chief commander" and them, something as simple as postcards or something more creative.
At the end have them vote where they would like to live.
As part of their presentations have them try to persuade others to live in a particular county.
If students need more experience in letter writing not note taking have them write another letter home to Mars instead of using the note taking format in Step 2.

Tips and suggestions to make this web quest go smoothly.

The web quest is best viewed in Internet Explorer.
Print out one or more copies of the web quest site for offline viewing, enabling them to plan ahead.
Put together samples of the work you expect the students to model.
In addition to providing the stationary and Facts Sheets provided here you will need to provide supplies for them to create brochures in Step 4.
After they have learned some general information about the state you will need to group them in pairs. They will each still be responsible for completing individual work for each step.
To easily incorporate this into your curriculum be sure to introduce letter writing skills and basic geography concepts such as boundaries and land forms prior to starting this.
Alert students that the link for NH Division of Travel and Tourism Development used in Step 2 groups towns into regions and not counties.

For computer ease advise students-

The cursor changes to a hand when it is an active link.
While I tried to avoid links that were overly commercial, inform the students that at web sites if something is flashing don't pick it. Its probably advertising.
Necessary links are usually at the bottom of each step but sometimes they may have to go back to previous links to remind themselves of information that they have already seen.
Go through the Internet resources to make sure that all links are working, this will also load the sites onto your computers cache and the result is that they will load faster when the students are going to the same pages.

Vocabulary list of possible unfamiliar terms

The Pathfinder Rover

Catastrophe

Colleagues

Pact

Website

Travel brochure

Links, sub links

Climate

Native

Governor

Capital