All About Scavenger Hunts

The purpose of a scavenger hunt is to have students collect information on a particular instruction topic, to teach students to use search engines properly, and to introduce students to the vast array of resources that are available on the web.

Developing a scavenger hunt is one method a teacher can use to teach academic concepts and teach navigation skills to students. Scavenger hunts can be of two primary types.

1. The teacher develops a series of questions or request a series of items for the student to collect and the student uses a search engine to locate the information.
2. The teacher develops a series of questions and gives the students a hypertext link to the URL that will answer the question.

In either case, developing a scavenger hunt is really no different from developing a general knowledge quiz for students. A teacher may take the following steps:

• Identify an idea/concept that he/she would like to reinforce or introduce.
• Search for web sites that reinforce/introduce the concept. Remember to use search sites for kids.
• Develop questions that may be answered at the site.
• Save it to a web site or give students a paper handout.

Directions for making your own Internet Scavenger Hunt

To make an easy scavenger hunt simply find a few sites with information on a topic of interest and significance to your classroom. You can use any of the search tools listed below or you can use the sites from the presentation. Ask a few questions that can be answered by visiting the site.

To make a more difficult scavenger hunt, come up with some questions that you would like answered and have the students look for the answers online or in encyclopedias or almanacs.

Try these scavenger hunt examples:

http://www.aea14.k12.ia.us/technology/ScavengerHunt.html

http://www.ctnba.org/ctn/k8/treasure.html

http://homepage.mac.com/cohora/ext/internethunts.html