Designed For
This WebQuest was designed for third through fifth grade students to be used as they learn about Thanksgiving traditions and history of early America. This WebQuest is also based on the Indiana Academic Standards for fifth grade Social Studies.
The standards that are used in this WebQuest are; 5.1.6, 5.1.7, 5.1.9, 5.1.22, 5.3.7, 5.3.10, 5.4.2, 5.5.1, 5.5.2.
Please refer to 2006-SS-Grade05.pdf for a full record of these and all the fifth grade Social Studies Indiana Standards.
Process
Students have three tasks and a finish product to complete the WebQuest. Each task is presented as a question. Each questions has two or more websites listed for student to look at to answer the question. There are additional questions to guide students to look for more information about each topic.
Share Your Discovery includes a worksheet with all the questions that student can print off and write down their answer. This section also other ways that students can share the information that they learned. A quiz from Scholastic is also included for students to test their new knowledge.
Students can evaluate themselves by following the checklist in Share Your Discovery. This has students double checking to see if they know the answers to the questions asked throughout the WebQuest.
Other Resources
This is a list of additional resources to help extend this WebQuest.
Video: History of Thanksgiving
The History Channel has several videos about the histroy of Thanksgiving which include information about the Pilgrims, Wampanoag tribe, history of tradition foods and etc.
The Pilmoth Plantation has developed a website that takes students on journey to explore what life would have like if they were a Pilgrim or a Wampanoag. The site is very interactive and ends with student writing captions for pictures that they saw throughout the site.
This is a modernized of the complete letter that Edward Winslow wrote about the Pilgrims first year. This letter also includes one of the few records of the first Thanksgiving feast. This information from this link is to be used for educational purposes only.
This website includes several full text journals, sermons, and books that were written during the Pilgrims first year or later by Pilgrims that lived at Plymouth Rock in 1620.