This image is a drawing of the only ship of Magellan to finish circumnavigating the globe. Magellan is one of the many explorers we have been researching for the last few weeks. We will soon create "Treasure Chests" in which we will place all the work each student has completed. We will begin giving presentations at the end of this week so that our classmates can learn some of the interesting facts about the men we have been studying.All students have finished making maps of their explorer's routes, timelines of important events in the explorer's life have been completed, artifacts representing each explorer have been created, and we are putting the final touches on our written essays.
In the process of this research project students have kept track of the specific reference resources used, learned how to take notes from their reading, written "hooks" for their essays, developed thesis statements about the importance of "their" explorers, and learned how to use the thesis statement to help organize their essay. Later this week we will use an online program to create "Works Cited" pages to accompany the essays.
Students have worked very hard on this extended project. It's been impressive to see them share research information and help each other with technical questions related to using Google Docs and their netbook computers. We are now looking forward to hearing the oral presentations and seeing our classmates dressed up as their particular explorer.
