Explorer Webquest

While studying explorers, my students worked on The Case of the Missing Trunks Webquest. I used the Webquest as a culminating activity to finish our unit. I love this lesson because it is set up like a mystery and the students are detectives working hard to solve the puzzle. My students loved enjoyed working on this project.


Here's the missing trunk.

To make this project run smoothly, there are a couple of things you will need to prepare ahead of time. I wanted to make this assignment feel real so I created a trunk for the artifacts. I used a cardboard box and wrapped it in construction paper. I made an artifact bag for each explorer. Each bag was numbered and had five artifacts inside. I used maps, pictures of flags, and primary sources for the artifacts.

This is an example of an explorer bag. I used this one for Ponce de Leon.

I divided the students into groups and gave each group a bag. The slide show below shows us in action! 

Explorer Webquest on PhotoPeach

Instead of creating luggage tags, I had my students create an explorer wordle using http://www.wordle.net/.