Introduction
This lesson is intended to enhance students critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Congratulations on becoming travel agents at a new and exciting agency that provides vacation packages to unconventional destinations. Your company decided to start offering luxury vacation packages to Antarctica and your job is to recruit people to sign up for one of the vacation.
Task
Some people have negative misconceptions of Antarctica, so your task is to make a PowerPoint presentation to skeptical clients to try and convince them that Antarctica is a great place to vacation.
Use these websites for help:
Process
1. You will first be put into groups of 3
2. You will research Antarctica and review the provided websites
3. As a group you will collaborate to find the best approach to entice prospective vacationers
4. Lastly you will make a PowerPoint presentation to show skeptical vacations that Antarctica is a great vacation destination
Evaluation
| CATEGORY | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Originality | Presentation shows considerable originality and inventiveness. The content and ideas are presented in a unique and interesting way. | Presentation shows some originality and inventiveness. The content and ideas are presented in an interesting way. | Presentation shows an attempt at originality and inventiveness on 1-2 cards. | Presentation is a rehash of other people's ideas and/or graphics and shows very little attempt at original thought. |
| Text - Font Choice & Formatting | Font formats (e.g., color, bold, italic) have been carefully planned to enhance readability and content. | Font formats have been carefully planned to enhance readability. | Font formatting has been carefully planned to complement the content. It may be a little hard to read. | Font formatting makes it very difficult to read the material. |
| Spelling and Grammar | Presentation has no misspellings or grammatical errors. | Presentation has 1-2 misspellings, but no grammatical errors. | Presentation has 1-2 grammatical errors but no misspellings. | Presentation has more than 2 grammatical and/or spelling errors. |
| Effectiveness | Project includes all material needed to gain a comfortable understanding of the topic. It is a highly effective study guide. | Project includes most material needed to gain a comfortable understanding of the material but is lacking one or two key elements. It is an adequate study guide. | Project is missing more than two key elements. It would make an incomplete study guide. | Project is lacking several key elements and has inaccuracies that make it a poor study guide. |
| Cooperation | Group delegates tasks and shares responsibility effectively all of the time. | Group delegates tasks and shares responsibility effectively most of the time. | Group delegates tasks and shares responsibility effectively some of the time. | Group often is not effective in delegating tasks and/or sharing responsibility. |
Conclusion
Antarctica is actually a very beautiful place to visit and without travel agencies promoting it, many people might not have the opportunity to visit.
A lesson you can learn from this assignment is to "never judge a book by its cover". Although, initially Antarctica might sound like a bad place to vacation but once you discover the beauty and amazing wildlife you could change your mind.
Technology Standards were taken from the California Common Core State Standards official website
Credits
Photo 1 was taken from theplanetD
Photo 2 was taken from Inhabitat Antarctica
Teacher Page
This assignment is intended for English students in 9th grade, however, it can be adapted and altered for different grades.