Teacher Page

Teacher Page:

This WebQuest was designed for 2nd grade Social Studies, but could easily be adapted for a variety of age levels. For those of you who have visited this WebQuest before, you can see that I have completely redone the site. I manage a variety of websites, but this WebQuest is by far the most visited and my personal favorite. This is why I decided to devote some time to improving it this summer. All the links should be ok now (I know some of them had become outdated) and there are more of them! I have also added some cool downloadable stuff to this page.

My goal is to make this website not only a great WebQuest, but a resource for teachers who want to teach a unit on this topic. (It is one of my favorite subjects to teach!)

So... please read on! The rest of this page contains all the materials, etc. I have advertised above! More stuff will be added over time, so please check back frequently! I am interested in your feedback! Please email me and let me know what you think! Is it better or worse than before?

Different ways to use this WebQuest in your classroom:

Have the students work in pairs or teams to research and present each continent.
Involve parent volunteers or paras in the research, for some guidance when surfing the internet.
Let your students choose another creative way to present their information if you do not have or do not know how to use PowerPoint.

Florida Sunshine State Standards for Social Studies covered in this WebQuest:

People, Races and Environment (Geography):

Standard 1: The student understands the world in spatial terms. (SS.B.1.1)

determines the absolute and relative location of people, places, and things
uses simple maps, globes, and other three-dimensional modes to identify and locate places
knows that areas can be classified as regions

Standard 2: The student understands the interactions of people and the physical environment. (SS.B.2.1)

identifies some physical and human characteristics of places

Classroom materials:

To begin with, I would like to recommend the following books from the “Rookie Reader” series:

Click on the book covers to view or purchase these books on Amazon.com. I have “six packs” of each title in my classroom and my kids work in small groups or pairs to complete the related worksheets. I also use them as read-alouds.

Activities to download:

I also recommend this reproducible book for teachers:

Click on the book cover to view or purchase this book on Amazon.com. This book has some good outline maps, quick review sheets about each continent, etc. It’s a good starting point for a unit on the continents and oceans.

Continent songs:

(To the tune of “Three Blind Mice”)

Continents, Continents

There are seven, There are seven

North America

South America

Antarctica and Australia

Asia and Africa

and Europe too

That’s all seven

(To the tune of the Alphabet song)

Europe, Asia, Africa

North and South America

Then you add Australia

Don’t forget Antarctica

Now we have as you have guessed

Named the seven continents

PowerPoint lessons/quizzes for CPS:

As an extension of the materials mentioned above, I recently designed these PowerPoint lessons for use with my CPS software, but they will work just fine as stand-alone PowerPoints. I think they would be great to review material already learned, introduce a lesson, teach note-taking skills, etc.

There is one PowerPoint for each continent, plus a review. Each PowerPoint concludes with a brief, ten question quiz. Each PowerPoint is available in web page (if you don’t have PowerPoint or need to view them online) or PowerPoint (downloadable) format. Click on the name of the continent to see the web page version, or right-click on (ppt) to download the actual PowerPoint presentation.