Riding The Rails!

An Adventure on the Transcontinental Railroad
designed  for third graders by

LindaWeaver

Introduction

ALL ABOARD for an adventure of a lifetime! Ride along on the transcontinental railroad and earn GOLD along the way. Although the gold rush is nearing an end, the owners of the Union Pacific Railroad need you to help them get passengers to buy tickets to travel on the tracks. The more tickets you help to sell...the more gold you'll earn!

Task

The Union Pacific Railroad has searched for the best experts available in the advertising business, and they have found YOU!  You are members of a unique advertising agency that has been selected to represent the railroad. Your task is to create an original advertising campaign complete with a slogan (catchy phrase), jingle (song), logo (graphic) and visual aids (multimedia presentation). 

Process

The Union Pacific Railroad Company is looking to you to create a unique advertising campaign. They have invested a huge amount of money in building their portion of the railroad, and they want to now sell tickets to pay for it. You need to work together as a team to design a logo, a catchy jingle, a slogan and a multimedia presentation that will have people clamoring to climb on board one of the trains. Remember you need to work as a team to combine your research, pick out the most important information and persuade people to take the ride of their lifetime. You will find out how much GOLD you earn when you present your advertising campaign to the investors. You can take a peek at the bank account the investors have by clicking here. They will only pay the full amount if the job is done completely.

Each one of you brings special skills and talents to this job. The opportunity to choose one of the following roles is yours. By exploring one of the roles below you will learn more about the transcontinental railroad. Discuss among your group which roles would best suit each group member. For a job description, click on each role.

After you gather all of your research, your team needs to decide on what should be included in the logo and the slogan. Use the planning sheets to record this information. Once that is decided, you should think about composing your jingle. The best jingles are so catchy so that people keep singing it once they've heard it. You may want to piggy back the words on to a tune you are already familiar with. The Environmentalist and the Graphic Artist can help here because they have links to some music sites that you may want to try. The final task is the mutlimedia presentation that you will create using Kid Pix. Each one of you is responsible for making sure that the questions that were asked of you are answered in this presentation. Be sure this presentation is VERY persuasive! Good Luck!

Conclusion

Congratulations on a job well done!  You have completed an exciting journey that has given you an opportunity to look at the importance of westward expansion in the development of the United States.  The Union Pacific Railroad Company is quite pleased with your advertising campaign and will deliver the amount of gold you have earned soon!  Although the transcontinental  railroad represents only one path of westward expansion, it certainly has played a vital role in the history of the United States and challenges us to think about where future explorations may lead us to.

Evaluation

You can check out what is required of your advertising campaign to earn the full amount of gold by clicking on the links to the evaluation pages.  It is very important that you review this page so that you know EXACTLY what is expected of you.  This will help to keep you on track!  

Your work on this WebQuest will earn you both group gold and individual gold.  Your individual grade will be determined by the research log notes you keep, your planning sheets, and the reflection sheet. The group grade will be determined by the actual logo, slogan, jingle, and Kid Pix presentation you make as a group  to the investors.   Click below to see how you will be evaluated.

Union Pacific Ticket Background Image  by  Andrew Smith
Animated Train can be found at Tina's Train Depot
Railroad Background
Train Tracks
Train Whistle can be found at Spikesys
Railroad Crossing Image
Steam Engine Graphic