Global Travel Project

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596//project1/GlobalTravel.html

Unit Authors

This unit was developed by Elizabeth Camp and Rick Hartley and delivered to 6th graders at O'Farrell Community School in several forms over the last three years.

Organizing Theme

As the title suggests the organizing theme of this project is Global Travel. Working in groups students created a fictitious character and then guided that character on a trip around the world.

Flag of Sudan

Content Areas

This project involves roughly equal portions of Language Arts, Social Studies and Math. In the area of Language Arts students were required to write a detailed description of their character that explained why that person was traveling. They were also required to keep daily logs of their character's activities. Social Studies played a very prominent role because of the global nature of the project. Teachers divided the world into eleven regions and required students to visit at least twelve countries in at least five of those regions.

Global Regions

In addition students were required to complete a country form for each of the places that they visited. This form required them to do research about the country and find pertinent information on it. Math also was an important component of the project because students were required to calculate the distances they traveled from one country to another in order to compute travel expenses. Students were also required to keep track of their expenditures in a number of logs.

Logs

Flag of Vancouver

Implementation

The project was implemented during Language Arts time because scheduling allowed a double block of time for that subject four days a week. It was taught simultaneously by three teachers from Family B1 to their own homebase students (groups of approximately 23-26). The project was taught at the discretion of each individual teacher. Although all were facilitating the same project the teachers had the discretion to decide which days they wanted to devote to it and how many days per week of Language Arts time they would spend on it. Even though this unit was multidisciplinary it did not impact the other core subjects that were being concurrently taught. The project was spread out over about six weeks and students worked on it approximately two to three days per week during Language Arts Time ( approximately 3-4 hours of class time per week.)

Outline of Activities

  1. Introduction- Teacher introduces project and models proper usage of logs.
  2. Students create character outline
  3. Students create character description
  4. Students chose which five regions they wish to visit
  5. Students decide which twelve countries within those five regions to visit
  6. Students create an itinerary which includes the cities they will use to enter each country
  7. Students begin "traveling"
  8. Students continue to "travel" until they have completed their itinerary.

Student Products

Students will work cooperatively to produce the following products:

Classroom Resources

In order to facilitate this project the teacher will want to allow students access to a few helpful materials.

Online Resources

These sites might be interesting to you and helpful to your students when planning their global travel project.

Extra Fun Things

In addition to the other elements already discussed teachers added two other elements that enhanced student interest in the project.

New Zeland Flag

Thinking Skills Engaged

This unit requires students to think like travelers. They must think logistically to plan their trip, make sure it is doable and make sure that they have chosen the best possible routes for their chosen destinations. They must use problem solving skills when they experience random encounters that delay their trip. The daily journal requires creative production of events and surroundings. They must routinely make decisions about what types of transportation and lodging to make use of.

Lessons Learned

The project was executed almost exactly as it was written and worked very well. Teachers had learned from an earlier cooperative project that group progress must be closely monitored and so steps were taken to make sure that the teams were progressing through their itinerary. When a team showed signs of falling behind teachers insisted that the members spend extra time either before or after school to catch up. One regrettable drawback about this project was the timing. Students were supposed to be allowed time in the computer lab to use the Mac Globe program to enhance their research, but a newspaper project usurped that time and deprived the students of that resource.

For More Information

Write to me
Jennifer_Brown@smtpgw.sdcs.k12.a.us

This description was written by Jennifer Brown. Last updated on March 6, 1996.
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