Lewis and Clark Web Quest

Part #1 - Interactive Game

You will do an interactive game through the National Geographic website.    You will see journal entries along the way and see what decisions Lewis and Clark had to make on their journey.  Go to the following website to enter into the interactive game: Lewis and Clark Interactive Game (make sure you click on "Did you know" and "journal" as you go as this is one of the most important parts of the assignment).  When you complete the game, it will give you a link titled where you have been.  Click this and print out the map. This will take 20-30 minutes.

Part #2 - Cyberhunt

You will do a cyberhunt to search the web for the answers to some questions about the journey.  Click on the Treasure Chest below to pull up the cyberhunt.  Click on the links following the questions and then answer the questions completely.

Part #3 - Cartography

• Print off an empty American Map from this link: USA
• Now take a look at a map of the Louisiana Purchase from the time of the purchase by following this Link: Louisiana Purchase Map . Using this map next to the map of the United States today that you printed off in the last step, compare the two.  
• Using one color (of your choice), color in the area on the modern map of the area that was bought in the Louisiana Purchase.  
• Now, using the map that you printed off in Part 1, compare the route map with the modern American map.  With a different color, draw in the route that was taken by Lewis and Clark.  
• Click on the following link to observe what Lewis and Clark ran in to on the journey.  Lewis and Clark Journal Log  Using this information, draw in the stops and experiences they had on their way.  (Minimum of 8 items)  Be creative and remember that this map is supposed to be a final product that someone can use and easily understand.  

Part #4 - Time and Place

• On a regular sized piece of paper, either draw or electronically create a timeline with the events of Lewis and Clark's experience on their expedition.  There is one small little nuance to this part of the assignment...  The timeline is to be used in a classroom for young students (6th graders).  You are teaching them about the Lewis and Clark expedition and the timeline will be you only teaching tool so it has to be interesting to 6th graders and has to be appropriately created.  (Suggestion; 6th graders like to be challenged, have to be disciplined, like things that are colorful and that have a lot of pictures on them).  Use the following link to start to find items for the timeline : Lewis and Clark
• In 2-3 paragraphs, which you can place on the back of the timeline, explain how you would do your lesson with these young kids.  

Part #5 - Venn Diagram

• Now that you have a better idea about the vast amount of land Lewis and Clark explored, make a list of items you think Lewis and Clark may have taken on their journey 200 years ago.  
• Now, make a list of items you would take on a journey today.  
• Make a Venn Diagram of the similarities and differences.  If you need help making the diagram check the following link: VENN DIAGRAM
• Answer the Question on How different is this list and why?  You can put the answer on the back of your Venn Diagram sheet.

Part #6 - Collection of short essays

• Research and Report - It was a herculean task to complete this expedition.  It took more than Lewis and Clark to get it done.  Research the people on the trip plus Sacagawea and Thomas Jefferson and report on the 5 you find to be most important.  
• You are to complete a 2-3 paragraph essay on those people answering the following questions: How did they contribute to the expedition?  How did they contribute to our state or the nation? 
• Here is a page that will show you who was involved: Lewis and Clark Participants (plus Sacagawea and Jefferson)

Conclusion:

Turn in all aspects of this assignment stapled and with a cover sheet.  The cover sheet should have you name and the title Lewis and Clark on the front and should include all of the following items:

1.     Map from part 1

2.     Cyberhunt worksheet from part 2

3.     Map from part 3

4.     Timeline from part 4

5.     Venn Diagram from part 5 

6.     Collection of short essays from 6

Huck Finn Web Quest

Huck Finn Web Quest

Directions: Create a Google Document with me (shipdog65@gmail.com) and follow the directions on that document.

Go to the websites as directed and answer the questions that follow.

Go to www.dictionary.com and define the following words using the first definition unless

otherwise noted:
1.) encomium:

2.) excoriated:

3.) oeuvre:

4.) philistine:

5.) pious (definition 2):

6.) contrarian:

7.) imperialist:

Know the Author:

Go to: http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/chronology.html

8.)  In what year was Mark Twain born?
9.) In what year did he die?
10.) What event was present at both his birth and death?
11.) What was the title of his first novel and when was it published?
12.) What happened in 1861?
11.) When did he go bankrupt and why?
12.) What was the title of his best selling novel?

Go to: http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/index.html
13.) Why did Mark Twain give up on scrapbooks?
14.) What was his only invention that made money?

Click on The Gilded Age 1869 – 1871 on the right. Then scroll through the pages
answering these questions.
15.) Who did Mark Twain marry?
16.) Describe his study in Elmira.
17.) In the format of a short essay (5 sentences) answer the following: Mark Twain describes his book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as “a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat. “ What do you think he meant by this quote?  Make sure you explain why.

Getting Past Black and White

Read the article, “Getting Past Black and White”:

His is an American classic that has been challenged time and again for reasons both substantial and frivolous; Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a perennial favorite of supporters and critics alike.  In his TIME article, “Getting Past Black and White,” Stephen Carter observes that, “Only a few books, according to the       American Library Association, have been kicked off the shelves as often as            Huckleberry Finn, Twain's most widely read tale. Once upon a time, people hated        the book because it struck them as coarse. Twain himself wrote that the book's   banners considered the novel "trash and suitable only for the slums." More             recently the book has been attacked because of the character Jim, the escaped        slave whose adventures twine with Huck's, and its frequent use of the word       nigger. (The term Nigger Jim, for which the novel is often excoriated, never          appears in it.)”

The challenge for educators required to teach The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is to make it relevant in 2009.  This is ultimately the challenge and goal of teaching any piece of literature, but even more so with a controversial classic such as Twain’s.  I have decided with my latest reading of the text that the key to unlocking the novel is through Jim and his internal conflicts.

For the modern adolescent reader, an adult escaped slave, portrayed through superstitious beliefs and with a complex and confusing southern dialect, is not easy to connect with.  It might be easier to simply dismiss him and focus attention instead on Huck.  But doing so neglects Jim and his very real social struggles.  It neglects the complicated racial, social, political complexity of the time that Twain sought to not only explore, but exploit.  To neglect understanding Jim is to allow the charges of Huck Finn as a racist book to proliferate.  It allows the book to be misread and misunderstood, and therefore not learned from.

But reality, of course, tells us that Jim, though fictional, is rooted in reality.  Jim’s experiences are similar to those of real people.  His emotions are real emotions; his dialect a written form of a real pattern of speech; his escaped community a mirror to the real communities of the time period.  Some real slaves, not unlike Jim, really escaped their masters and sought to make better lives for themselves somewhere else.  The stories of those real people might help us to accept Jim not as a confusing caricature, but as an enlightening character that might reveal some of the realities Twain ultimately wants his readers to explore.

By listening to and reading the accounts of those who lived in Jim’s time and experienced the world through a lens much closer to his than those of us in 2009, their stories and experiences might help make Jim’s a little more understandable.  Twain, Huck, and his best friend Jim are ultimately still relevant because, as Carter observes, Twain (and his creations) “may have done more to rile the nation over racial injustice and rouse its collective conscience than any other novelist in the past century who has lifted a pen.

18.) How can someone who uses the ‘N’ word in his writing also be characterized as “the man who popularized the sophisticated literary attack on racism”?

How would you describe Mark Twain? List 3 adjectives that characterize the man and the author. Be prepared to explain why you think these are appropriate descriptions.

19.)

20.)

21.)

Go to: www.twainquotes.com

• Click QUOTATIONS
• Click N then NEGROES

22.) In his second opinion from the New York Tribune, besides Negroes, what other group(s) did Mark Twain consider to oppressed and perhaps not worthy of citizenship? 

23.) Mr. Twain offers some contradictory quotes. He felt that offering „negroes‟ citizenship was 

„startling and disagreeable‟ yet he also says „[t]he „damned naygurs‟—this is another descriptive title which has been conferred upon them by a class of our fellow citizens who persist, in the most 

short-sighted manner, in being on bad terms with them in the face of the fact that they have got to 

sing with them in heaven or scorch with them in hell some day in the most familiar and sociable 

way, and on a footing of most perfect equality‟. What do you think about Mark Twain‟s racial views? Is he a hypocrite? How does he reconcile his seemingly opposing views? Was he a man ahead of his times? Use quotes from the articles in writing a 3 paragraph essay telling your feelings on Twain.

Now that you are a Mark Twain Expert:

Go to: http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/timeline/index.html and play the game.

• Click START PLAYING
• Answer the questions on HIS LIFE: LEVEL 1
• Upon completion of LEVEL 1, click the HIS TIMES: LEVEL 1. Complete the questions below.

24 - 25.) The Civil War broke out in ____________________. Samuel Clemens served _______________ on the ___________________ side.
26 - 27.) . When was the Spanish American War? _____________________ How did it
change Mark Twain‟s views?
28.) When was the California Gold Rush?

29.) When did the last “Indian Territory”, Oklahoma, open legally for settlement? 

30.) When was Uncle Tom’s Cabin published? ___________________ Why was it 

important to Mark Twain? 

31 - 32.) What is the Reconstruction Era?  When did it end?

Literary Focus - Irony

33.) What is it?

• List three kinds:

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