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Antarctic Jeopardy - Science and Language Arts for grades 6-8

The purpose of this activity is to create questions and answers for a "Jeopardy"-like game based on Dan Grossman's journal entries. The class will be divided into small groups. Each group will be responsible for creating four questions based on one of Dan's journal entries. After all the groups have written questions on different journal entries, the class will divide into teams and play the game. The amount of teacher involvement needed for this activity may vary depending on the grade level of your students.


1. Read Dan Grossman's journals with your students. Explain to students that they will play a game of Jeopardy based on the information from the journals. Tell students that if they take notes on the journal entry, they will be able to use these notes during the game.


2. After you read each journal entry, assign the entry to one of the six groups. Ask the group to write six questions from the journal that will be used in the Jeopardy Game. Tell students to assign each question a dollar amount from $100-$600 based on the difficulty of the question.


3. Tell the group to write the title of the journal entry, the questions, the answers to the questions and the dollar amount for each question on a piece of paper. Collect the paper when students have finished. It is a good idea to verify the answers to the questions after you collect them.


4. Divide the class into two groups. Make certain that you do not separate any group members from the group they worked in to generate the questions. Create a chart to play the game. Write the name of the journal entries across the top of the chart. Write the dollar amounts going down the side of the chart. Write each question and answer on a separate sheet of paper and tape each paper in the appropriate box based on the article and the dollar amount.


5. Decide as a class what each team's name will be and which team will go first. Once the class has made these decisions, a member from the first team will choose a question from the chart and hand the question to the teacher. Make sure that students do not select a question from the category that their team created.


6. The class has twenty seconds to answer the question. During this time the student may check his or her notes. If the student doesn't answer the question correctly, the opposite team has an opportunity to answer the question correctly. If this team fails to answer the question correctly, the question goes back to the first team. If the first team is unable to answer the question correctly, the second team is given one final chance. If neither team answers the question correctly after two attempts, no point value is assigned and another question is selected.


7. Continue the game in the same manner until all of the questions have been read. Add up each team's points to determine the winner. You may play this game more than once. You could choose to include information from Antarctic Sun articles in the Current Events section of this Web site.