Postcards from Somewhere

This lesson will address the following standards: Information literacy, Elements of Geographical Study and Analysis and NETS standards 2a interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media and 8 use collaborative electronic authoring tools to explore common curriculum content from multicultural perspectives with other learners.

The lesson would start with the community building activity where the teacher has cut the continents into 2 or 3 pieces according to how many people you want in each group.

Provide a map of the world as reference and review the shapes of the continents. Have the students find the other parts of their continent and put their continent together. You could have them orient themselves into a world map if you have enough students and time.

The students will work in their continent groups to complete a Postcard webquest for their home location and for their e-pal's location. Students will research the information on the notes sheet and create a postcard for both their home location and another location being studied. To create their postcard for our location, the students will take photos of the locations around our town to add to their postcard. They will use Internet sources to choose a picture from the e-pal's country and ask the e-pal to comment. We will do the same for the pictures that they chose for our location. We will share our postcards with our epals.