Teacher Information

     This WebQuest is a creative opportunity for your students to learn a variety of skills as well as some important historical content. Each student will take on a role with their own individual task to complete. Three students will become experts on the transcontinental railroad. Once each student has completed their research, the students will work together to make a Kid Pix multimedia presentation, and compose a slogan, jingle, and logo for the Union Pacific Railroad Company.

   

   

    Riding the Rails encompasses these Massachusetts State Frameworks:

1. Chronology and Cause. Students will understand the chronological order of historical events and recognize the complexity of historical cause and effect, including the interaction of forces from different spheres of human activity, the importance of ideas, and of individual choices, actions, and character.

2. Historical Understanding. Students will understand the meaning, implications, and import of historical events, while recognizing the contingency and unpredictability of history how events could have taken other directions by studying past ideas as they were thought, and past events as they were lived, by people of the time.

3. Research, Evidence, and Point of View. Students will acquire the ability to frame questions that can be answered by historical study and research; to collect, evaluate, and employ information from primary and secondary sources, and to apply it in oral and written presentations. They will understand the many kinds and uses of evidence; and by comparing competing historical narratives, they will differentiate historical fact from historical interpretation and from fiction.

6. Interdisciplinary Learning: Natural Science, Mathematics, and Technology in History. Students will describe and explain major advances, discoveries, and inventions over time in natural science, mathematics, and technology; explain some of their effects and influences in the past and present on human life, thought, and health, including use of natural resources, production and distribution and consumption of goods, exploration, warfare, and communication. (See also relevant strands in the Massachusetts Mathematics and Science/Technology Curriculum Frameworks.)

Geography Strand

The Learning Standards for Geography are:

8. Places and Regions of the World. Students will identify and explain the location and features of places and systems organized over time, including boundaries of nations and regions; cities and towns; capitals and commercial centers; roads, rails, and canals; dams, harbors, and fortifications; and routes of trade and invasion.

9. The Effects of Geography. Students will learn how physical environments have influenced particular cultures, economies, and political systems, and how geographic factors have affected population distribution, human migration, and other prehistoric and historical developments, such as agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and transportation.

10. Human Alteration of Environments. Students will describe the ways in which human activity has changed the world, such as removing natural barriers; transplanting some animal and plant species, and eliminating others; increasing or decreasing the fertility of land; and the mining of resources. They explain how science, technology, and institutions of many kinds have affected human capacity to alter environments.

English Language Arts Learning Standards

Language Strand
Students will:
1. Use agreed-upon rules for informal and formal discussions in small and large groups.
2. Pose questions, listen to the ideas of others, and contribute their own information or ideas in group discussions and interviews in order to acquire new knowledge.
3. Make oral presentations that demonstrate appropriate consideration of audience, purpose, and the information to be conveyed.

Composition Strand
Students will:
19. Write compositions with a clear focus, logically related ideas to develop it, and adequate supporting detail.
20. Select and use appropriate genres, modes of reasoning, and speaking styles when writing for different audiences and rhetorical purposes.
21. Improve organization, content, paragraph development, level of detail, style, tone, and word choice in revising their compositions.
22. Use their knowledge of standard English conventions for sentence structure, usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling to edit their writing.
23. Use self-generated questions, note-taking, summarizing, précise writing, and outlining to enhance learning when reading or writing.
24. Use open-ended research questions, different sources of information, and appropriate research methods to gather information for their research projects.
25. Develop and use rhetorical, logical, and stylistic criteria for assessing final versions of their compositions or research projects before presenting them to varied audiences.

Media Strand
Students will:
26. Obtain information by using a variety of media and evaluate the quality of the information obtained.
28. Design and create coherent media productions with a clear focus, adequate detail, and consideration of audience and purpose.

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