Westward Expansion was a time of both discovery and of trade. The Mountain Men of the far west hunted usually for beaver pelts and other furs of the forests of North America and were part of this time era. These "mountain men" wandered the mountains of North America and that's how they received their name. With specialized tools, they hunted the animals of this country for their fur with hopes of becoming rich in the future. This webquest is made with the purpose of teaching students from grades 7-8.
The Problem:
Students are owners of a pelts and fur company during the fur trade with the objective of earning at least 10% of the amount of money they start off with ($1,000). They work with closely with these Mountain Men and are in charge of paying them as well as their employees along with other expenses. Students must earn a minimum of 10% in earnings or their business is shut down.
Here are some websites that may help guide throughout this webquest:
http://www.mountainofstone.com
http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/amm.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/HNS/Mtmen/home.html
http://www.over-land.com/westpers3.html
http://www.42explore2.com/mtnmen.htm
Process:
1. Teachers start by breaking up the class into groups of 3-4 or assigning group captains.
2. Explain a bit about what the project is about or log on to this webquest and go through it briefly with your students. Then give a brief lesson on who were the mountain men, what did they do, and the fur trade. Be sure to mention the most common animals who were part of the fur trade.
3. For about a week, teachers should allow students to browse through textbooks and other sources to find useful information. You may also want to start making plans to go to the school's media center or the computer lab during this week.
4. By now students should be starting the drawing of the map and be done by the end of the 2nd week. If you were granted permission for the media center and the lab at this point, it would have to be left to the student to finish their group's map at home or whenever they have leisure from work.
5. At this stage of the project, groups should be working diligently with no problem whatsoever. If there are problems with this, feel free to discuss with your students and ask them what is going wrong. By weeks 3-4, you should have plans to go to the media center only. This would give students the opportunity of not only depending on the Internet as their primary resource and will expose them to researching in a real library.
6. When week 5 arrives, students should have all the information they need and begin working on their powerpoint presentations or at least discussing them. The next 2 weeks would be only for the computer lab so that they have both class and home time to work on their project.
7. As some group members are working on the presentation, the remaining members should be working on the report. This should be done by week 10, so that they have at least a week and the weekend to work and refine it.
8. From week 11 going into week 12, all of the information needed for the budget sheet should be gathered and the budget sheet done. After everything is finished, the group should begin on working on what they would say and do for their oral presentation the following week.
9. Finally, on week 13 the presentations should begin. If you are not done by the end of the week, feel free to continue the presentaions into the week after. to grade each group's work have the students listen to each others' presentations, critique them,and grade them on scale from 0-6 with 6 being the highest. Teachers should have student grade them in the areas of teamwork, information, neatness, preparedness, presentation, grammar, and any other additions of your choice.
Credits:
http://www.mountainofstone.com
http://www.xmission.com/~drudy/amm.html
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/HNS/Mtmen/home.html
http://www.over-land.com/westpers3.html
http://www.42explore2.com/mtnmen.htm
http://www.historyonthenet.com/American_West/mountain_men.htm
http://www.pcmaf.org/fur_trade.htm
