Volcanoes

A WebQuest for 4th Grade Science

Designed by Tiffany Cooke

cook8403@pacificu.edu

Introduction

This lesson was designed as part of a work sample on earth changes.

This lesson should be used as a final project after students have finished a unit on earth changes. This lesson uses technology to allow students to explore the many different elements of volcanoes.

Learners

This lesson was designed for fourth graders. It consists mainly of science but reading, writing and researching skills also play an important role.

The learners should have an understanding of how volcanoes are formed and how they work before they begin this lesson.

Curriculum Standards

Science Standards Addressed

• Identify effects of rapid changes on Earth's surface features including earthquakes and volcanoes.
• Collect, organize, and display scientific data.

This lesson challenges students to do more than just learn science content. This was created to encourage the students to develop researching skills, planning/organizational skills, writing skills, and citing skills.

Process

Written to students:

To get yourselves ready for this assignment, I want you to think about the mindset of a volcanologist. What kinds of things are important to volcanologists? What type of writing would a volconologist most likely use? You should use your thoughts about these things to help guide your writing.

Your next step in this process is going to be choosing the volcano that you want to do your piece on. The volcano you choose must be somewhere in the U.S. and it must be an active volcano. I suggest that you report on volcanoes that either have had some kind of change in activity within the last year or an anniversary of a big event in the volcano's history.

Once you have decided on your volcano, it is time to begin your research. Your report must include, but is not limited to: description of type of vocano, where it is located, a brief summary of the volcano's history, the date and type of its last activity, description of the type of eruptions that it is known for, a description of the products it produces during its eruptions and any possible dangers it poses to the population or environment around it.

The websites listed under resources is a good place for the students to begin their research.

The students should be told about the project early so that they can begin thinking about a volcano that they might be interested in learning more about. The research might be done a couple of different days during the science block, but then the students are going to need time to organize and write. I think that ideally, it would be a nice month long project.

Students at this grade level have a hard time summarizing things and putting them into their own words, because of this, I would recommend a mini-lesson on this to avoid such problems. Also, students will have varying degrees of experience researching and using the internet. Allow students with little experience more time to gather their research and having additional people in the classroom to assist students would also be a great help.

The only skills that a teacher needs to conduct this lesson is basic internet skills.

Variations

If this lesson is done in a classroom there may not be as many computers, so a couple of students at a time might have to go do their research. This may need to take place over multiple days until the whole class has the information that they need.

Resources Needed

All students need for this activity is a computer that has internet capabilities. The following are the websites that I think are a good start for the research part of this project.

http://library.thinkquest.org/17457/english.html

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/find_regions.cfm

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Historical.html

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Historical.html

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Historical.html

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/hazards.html

It would be nice to be able to use a computer lab where all the students can do their research at once. If this is a possibility, then it would be a good idea to have a couple of parent helpers come in that day to help with project and technology questions.

Evaluation

Judge each student's piece based on the following:

Credits & References

Picture was taken from www.remax-tresamigos-cr.com

"We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuest, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuest. On the line after the original author's name, you may add Modified by (your name) on (date). If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL."