Submitted by: Julie Ballowe, Kelly Robinson, Gary Chilcoat, Junius Myers
School: The Academy at Virginia Randolph
Summary
This project has been completed by a group of history and physical education students at the Academy at Virginia Randolph. The purpose of this project is multimodal. It includes a history lesson, a physical education lesson, as well as an introduction to the sport of geocaching/waymarking. The outcome of this project is a field trip lesson plan for use by teachers for all age groups and school divisions to complete while learning about the Civil War.
The lesson will take place during a field trip to the Cold Harbor Battlefield. During the lesson, the students will be following the walking trail around the battlefield while completing a crossword puzzle. Through informational signs, students will learn about the Battle at Cold Harbor; including the dates of the battle(s), how trench warfare was used, and the number of casualties during the battle. The students will be able to see trenches that were dug over a century ago by soldiers with few tools. They will see rifle pits and learn what they were used for. Students will see the lay of the land, which has changed some since the war, and will visualize what the land looked like during battle. Upon successful completion of the crossword puzzle, students will receive a set of specific geographic coordinates that they will use GPS (global positioning system) technology to navigate to. This is a great introduction or review of latitude and longitude. A “virtual geocache” (or waypoint) is located at the specified coordinates, which is part of a world-wide “seek-and-find” game known as geocaching/waymarking. Finders of the cache may publicly log their find on www.waymarking.com. Students and teachers from Henrico County will have access to the AVR blog site for this project, located here: http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/knightlife/ .
TIPC Ratings
Students used the Internet to research and determine the reliability of websites about the Battle of Cold Harbor. They found information about the battle which provided them background for their field trip. Students synthesized the information they gathered from the field trip for the creation of their blog.
Students used the information they gathered from their Internet search and the field trip to Cold Harbor Battlefield to create a blog. Student had an opportunity to share the information they gathered on the Internet to determine sites that provided reliable information about Geocaching and Cold Harbor Battleground and sharing that information with readers of their blog.
Students used the information they collected from their Internet search and their trip to the battlefield to create the blog to share information which included information on Geocaching while they had an opportunity to exercise. Students had an opportunity to use real longitude, latitude information on the GPS to locate the virtual caches and to navigate around the park.
Students gathered information from the Internet, from taking a field trip to the Cold Harbor Battlefield interpreting the information they researched, using their GPS to locate virtual caches, and walking the park, to create a blog to share this information and experiences of Geocaching.
Student Artifact
http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/knightlife/
