ThinkQuest!

[|ThinkQuest Project Environment]
Third and fourth grade students at Woodstock Elementary School are involved in ThinkQuest on a daily basis. The ThinkQuest platform provides personal space for students to create and share and also a project space. This exciting program helps teachers to manage student technology projects as it excites and engages students. Click [|here] to find out more about ThinkQuest.

The information and images below are just a few examples of work completed by students in the ThinkQuest project environment. The students work through activities, post text, create lists, respond to questions via message boards, brainstorms, votes. They also are able to upload pictures, documents, and multi-media files.

A few examples of projects are shown. Students are currently participating in a joint project that allows students to work with other students from across the globe as they explore space. This collaborative project, "Share the Skies", is is dedicated to providing students and teachers to opportunity study astronomy in real time during the daytime without leaving the classroom.

Students in fourth grade studied Spanish and French explorers. The question they would answer? What impact did the explorers of the past have on the present day Alabama? Curriculum Standards (4th grade standards): List reasons for European exploration and settlement in Alabama and the impact of Europeans on trade, health, land expansion, and tribal reorganization of Native American populations in Alabama. • Locating European settlements in early Alabama • Explaining reasons for conflicts between Europeans and Native Americans in Alabama from 1519 to 1840 Expected Outcomes: Students will learn what it might have been like to see Alabama before it was Alabama. They will think about what it was like to leave home, family, and country, and travel to a new world. They will learn about some famous explorers and determine how their explorations and discoveries impacted the state today.

Narvaez
Panfilo de Narveaz was born in Vallodolid, Spain in 1470 Panfilo de Narveaz was granted the land of Florida by the emperor Charles V In 1527 A series of hurricanes and fights killed many of the crew! three rafts sank to a Spanish settlement to Mexico but two surviving rafts (carrying 80 men) landed at Galveston Island (of what now is Texas) .Narveaz Didn't survive... After a very cold winter with very little food, only 15 men survive
 * **Birth!**
 * **The Grant**
 * **Whoa**
 * **The sinking**
 * **The Winter**

[|Link to Kidspiration web - LaSalle]

3rd Grade Project in Thinkquest - Native American Heritage
Essential Question What was the culture of the various Native American tribes and how did it change after relocation? Curriculum standards: Describe characteristics and migration patterns of human populations in the Western Hemisphere. Expected Outcomes: Students will learn about the culture of various Native American tribes. They will imagine their life as a Native American child during the time before relocation and after relocation in a first person essay. They will have some understanding of the reasons for relocation of the Native Americans. Required resources: Internet, books, guests speakers, materials for models. How will this project help the class, school, community, or world? This project will help students appreciate and understand other cultures.


 * [[image:hopi.jpg width="244" height="190" caption="A Pueblo Home"]] || [[image:creek.jpg caption="Arts and Crafts of the Creek"]] || [[image:20091216140241_l.jpg width="226" height="178" caption="Beaded collars of the Navajo"]] ||

Students learned about the clothing of their tribe and posted it in ThinkQuest as a list. Students follow specific directions on how to post their information. This was their first ThinkQuest project.
Powhatan Tribe loincloths knee length skirts Rabbit skin robes, ponchos
 * **Men**
 * **Women**
 * **Both**

Iroquois Tribe men wore breech cloths with long leggings. women wore wrap around shirts with shorter leggings.
 * **men**
 * **women**

====After research and activities the students final task was to take all of the information and write a 1st person narrative from a Native American child's perspective. The boys in each group worked together to write a story from a boy child's perspective and the girls worked together to write from a girl's perspective. Here is one example of their finished product.==== ====**//One morning my Mom and my Dad and I woke up. I did my chores while my Dad went hunting. My Mom made breakfast. I had to make up the bed. Dad came back home. He took me for a walk around the forest and gathered nuts and berries. At the time we got home it was sunset. We ate the food Dad brought home for us. He brought deer.//**==== ====**//The next morning we ate breakfast. We had to begin our 1,000 mile walk on The Trail of Tears to our new home. We felt very sad because we lost our home and our land. We didn't know what our new home would be like. We had to leave many of our things behind. We were very cold and had little food or clothing. We hope we make it.//**====

The Children Who Danced

 * //I woke up this morning and listened to the sound of my mother cooking outside the longhouse. The longhouse is our summer house. My sister is getting married today. I put on my deer skin dress and went outside to help my mother. I picked up the woven basket I had made and went to pick flowers for the wedding ceremony. When I got back it was time for the ceremony to begin. It was very beautiful. Me and my friend, Spirit, had fun dancing. It was a good day.//**