Suggestions for Use
There are many ways to use Ghost Town – as a whole class activity, small group exercise or indeed an individual homework task. Ultimately, the way you use Ghost Town with your own students depends very much on how your learning environment is set up.
- Do you have a computer in your classroom?
- Can you project a CD-ROM onto a large screen so that the whole class can participate?
- Will you use Ghost Town in a computer centre as opposed to a classroom?
Therefore the following is merely a suggested approach that you may need to modify depending upon your particular learning environment.
- Project Ghost Town onto a large screen so that all members of your class can interact with the program.
- Hand each student a copy of the score sheet (Activity Sheet One) so that they can participate in discussion and make decisions at each stage (scene) of the investigation of the town and try to work out what happened to this once thriving place – Was it war, a drought or perhaps a flood? Or was it an explosion or a fatal disease? Encourage your students to critically examine the evidence. Some of them might argue that it is impossible to tell but urge them to make a decision. After all, they will be able to review their decisions as they uncover additional evidence.
- When you have worked through the seven scenes get your students to add up their scores. Those with the highest scores are the winners, either by luck or by careful research! Remember, this is meant to be a fun activity even though there are important learning outcomes.
- After interacting with Ghost Town your students, can complete the other activity sheets in order to practice the steps of the inquiry process that the characters in the program went through when trying to solve the mystery of what happened to Ahmville.
- Activity Sheets 5 and 6 provide the students with both a guide and framework with which to plan their own research about a topic that interests them, or a specific topic related to the class curriculum.
- There is also an Essay Guide to assist them with their presentation should they choose to do an essay as well as an Independent Study Record.
And finally, you might also like to print the PDF entitled – Ghost Town Curriculum Unit. This unit has been published in STUDIES 1/2006, an educational magazine that has been sent free of charge to all secondary schools three times a year for the last 11 years. If you don’t know about it yet, please talk to your librarian or contact us at www.ryebuck.com.au This unit is especially suitable for students at Years 8-10.
The PDF content listed here is not downloadable but available on the CD-ROM.
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