North Pole: Myth and Magic!

A WebQuest for 1st-2nd Grade Language Arts

Introduction:

Brrr!!!!! Grab your coat and gloves and join us for some fun activities at the North pole. This web quest is an interactive experience for young students. Come join Frosty and Rudolph for a walk in the winter wonderland. Let your class enjoy the cold, winter months while learning about the mysterious North pole.

The Tasks:

As a junior elf, you will be able to do the following activities:

play the traditional memory game,

visit some mysterious people at the North Pole,

travel through a marvelous maze,

play tic tac toe and count the snowflakes,

take the Junior Elf Exam, and

draw and describe your favorite winter time fun.

The Process:
Here are some outstanding winter time fun activities. You and your class can have fun while visiting the mysterious happenings at the North Pole. It would be best if you follow the process in the order in which I have listed them.

1. How good is your memory? You can exercise your memory while you visit Lenny at the North Pole. Lenny will let you play The Traditional Memory Game. You may either choose easy, medium, or hard.
2. Many mysterious people live at the North Pole. We will be visiting Jolly O' St. Nick, Rudolph and His Gang of Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman. While visiting Santa, you may e-mail your Christmas list. Next, you will try to name all the reindeer. Lastly, you can build your own snowman.
3. Will Santa be in time for Christmas? Have fun traveling through The Marvelous Maze with the reindeer. Help the reindeer find their way through the maze to Santa.
4. Billy Bear wants you to come and play. Do you have what it takes to beat Billy Bear at a game of Tic Tac Toe?How good are you at counting? You will need to count all the Little Snowflakes that make up the big snowflake.
5. How many of you would like to be a junior elf? Do you know all you need to know? Let's go to the North Pole and take the Junior Elf Exam. If you do know all you need to know. Then, you will be rewarded with a junior elf certificate.
6. After you have finished all the activities, you need to draw a picture of your favorite winter time fun. Next, you may tell the class why you choose this picture. Remember this is your picture. Do it your way. The more creative the better!

The Evaluation:

Students are evaluated on individual accomplishments of defined tasks using the following rubric.

	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4
Identifies matches in the traditional memory game.	Can not identify any matches in the traditional memory game.	Can identify and match the pictures in the memory game at the easy level.	Can identify and match the pictures in the memory game at the medium level.	Can identify and match the pictures in the memory game at the hard level.
Following Directions	Can not follow the directions for the activities.	Can accomplish one of the activities.	Can accomplish all three of the activities with some assistance.	Can complete the activities with no assistance.
Counts the snowflakes within a picture.	Does not attempt the activity.	Counts the snowflakes with some assistance.	Counts the snowflakes with a little assistance.	Counts the snowflakes alone with a 100% accuracy.
Takes the junior elf exam and prints out the certificate.	Has difficulty going through the exam.	Goes through the exam with little assistance but cannot print the certificate.	Goes through the exam but cannot print the certificate without help.	Navigates the elf exam and prints out the certificate with no help.
Draw and describes their favorite winter time fun.	Can tell you what their favorite winter time fun is, but does not draw it or describe it.	Can draw a picture of their favorite winter time fun but, but does not describe it.	Can draw a picture and tell you about their favorite winter time fun with a little guidance.	Can draw a picture and tell you about their favorite winter time fun with no help.

Conclusion:

Did you enjoy your trip to the North Pole? What was your favorite activity? I hope you enjoyed wandering through my winter wonderland WebQuest! Tell all your friends about the magic and myths you found at the North Pole. Come back and visit as often as you would like.

Credits & References:

I found a few great sites while building my WebQuest. Billy Bear 4 Kids is a great site filled with activities and great backgrounds for young students. Kids Domain is another wonderful site with lots of activities and very well organized. Northpole.net is where I found several of my WebQuest pictures. I owe a special "Thank You" to Fran Todd for all of her wonderful, helpful ideas. I also want to thank Dr. Bruce Lewis for being so patient and kind.

Teacher Advice:

This WebQuest is designed to be used with 1st and 2nd grade students in Language Arts Class.

The students will use the following critical thinking skills: they will apply the winter imagery into their own life experiences, they will use problem solving to identify snowflakes, and make matches in the memory game.

The students should be allowed to practice going through a maze before doing the WebQuest.

This WebQuest should take each student about 3 days to complete. It would be great if the room had several computers that could be running simultaneously.

Before beginning Process 5, the teacher should visit this site to decide upon the appropriateness due to some religious content.

Basically any 1st and 2nd grade teacher should be able to pull this WebQuest off with ease.

This WebQuest can be done with one teacher monitoring one class. Hopefully there will be at least three computers in each classroom.

Created by Janet Hays for EDU 506 @ FHU School of Education by Dr. Bruce Lewis on December 4, 2001.