Global Travel Project

http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec596/travel.html

Unit Authors

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

Content Areas

This unit focuses on the discipline of social studies, with a strong emphasis in geography, and it also involves the subjects of language arts, math, and a little science.

Organizing Theme

The concept of world travel is the focus of this unit, encouraging the students to use their imagination to explore new countries and new ways of life. Instead of focusing on one certain theme or concept, as most interdisciplinary units do, this one lets the students explore global issues by simulating an imaginary trip around the world. The students will be involved in researching the history of various countries, as well as exploring their political, cultural, economic, and social aspects.

Implementation

The unit is taught in a 6th grade triad, with all three teachers heavily involved. The unit usually takes three to four weeks to complete, with lessons taking place in all three classes three or four times a week. Each teacher is involved, and the students expect to go from social studies to science to math, not as separate entities, but in the realm of a full day of world exploration. This unit is classified as interdisciplinary because all the teachers are involved in the planning and implementation. The unit encompasses all the core classes, and the students usually see the connection between the classes and the focus on the overall theme.

Outline of Activities

An actual breakdown of events for this unit is hard to provide exactly because the nature of this project is to encourage the students to pace thmeselves, in order to reach a common goal at a common deadline. An overview of the unit, however, involves the students planning a trip around the world for a fictitious character. The students will work in teams of three or four and will be required to guide their character through twelve different countries.

They will also be required to keep a log of their expenses, a daily journal of their travels, and collect information about each country they visit. The information the students gather will be recorded on information sheets and will include things such as a drawing of the country's flag, primary language(s), culturally or geographically significant places, population, type of currency, and major exports.

Some of the major exercises and lessons involved in this unit include:

  1. Discussion of why people travel around the world and the occupations and economic factors which enable people to do so. From this, students will be able to create a character that would realistically be able to travel around the world. Some examples include magazine photographer, musician, reporter, model, and spy.
  2. After the character is chosen, the team will write a one-page biography describing their character.
  3. Students will plot out which regions of the world their character will visit.
  4. Students will plot out which twelve countries within those chosen regions they will visit.

Before the students actually begin their simulated trip, the teacher will model for them examples of how to maintain an expense log, the daily travel journal, and the information form, using a country, such as the Liechtenstein, which is not very well known. This is the country used last year for this activity.

Student Products

The final product of this world travel project is a journal that the students keep throughout the unit, and this journal includes daily entries about the activities and events of their imaginary character, information sheets about each country visited, and the expense log documenting the entire trip. Each group of four students is responsible for one journal, since they create a character as a group.

Assessment is based on meeting expectations and guidelines set up by the teachers at the beginning of the unit. This includes believability of the character, the accuracy of the logs, the thoroughness of the daily journal, and the completeness and accuracy of the information forms. Students will also be required to set daily goals to assist in meeting the teachers' requirements.

Thinking Skills Engaged

The students learn many skills during this unit, it being the most comprehensive project of our curriculum this year. They learn the importance of cooperative learning, including the responsibility involved and the, sometimes difficult, task of working with others. Fact finding and research play an important part in the students' trips around the world. They must, of course, research the countries they are visiting, in order to write an accurate account of their visit.

They are also keeping records of hotels, restaurants, museums, and other various forms of entertainment, so close study of each country is a must. The final product is the journal, a document that is both creative and fact based. The students must engage in very disciplined thinking, in order to keep track of expense accounts and to balance their simulated checkbooks. The students also engage in various forms of problem solving over the course of this project. They must work together to figure out how to successfully travel from country to country, while adhering to their financial budget of $50,000. They must decide how to eat, where to sleep, where to go for entertainment, and what souvenir to buy in each country, also a requirement.

Lessons Learned

The main concern of all the teachers was that of organization. The first year, the teachers kept the project fairly loose, meaning they hoped to introduce the project and then let the students go at their own pace to visit as many countries as possible. This did not work very well with the sixth graders. In the second year, this being the third, the teachers decided to "tighten things up a little." The introduction was solid and concrete, taking a full day of explanation, discussion, and question-and-answer time.

The most important concept to go over repeatedly with the students is where they want to go. Obviously, most of the students are not world travellers, so they really had a hard time deciding where to go and why. A guided lesson in world geography is a must before embarking on this project. Another important aspect for teachers to assess beforehand is the level of student ability. The reason for this is the unit is extremely flexible, but it should not be once it's started. In other words, decide before beginning how many countries the students should visit by the deadline, decide how complex the finance logs should be, based on their level of math ability. These elements should be decided by the team before the unit begins, so as to avoid any unnecessary confusion during the project. Depending on how focused the students are, too, will determine how much freedom is given to them to work at their own pace. But, remember, if planned correctly, this unit can be easily narrowed down or expanded, making it easy to adapt to almost any grade level.

This description was written by Amy Neal. Last updated on March 6, 1996.
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