States Project

Tourist: Someone who is traveling for fun.

Have your students become tourists for a week. Assign small groups a state to study. You could combine this with other teaching such as the 13 colonies or Lewis and Clark since you won't have 50 groups of students in your class. Or if you are in a big school make it a grade level project and have all of your grade level doing it at once that way all of the states are studied. Give students a rubric so that they know what they are looking for when researching. Things could include date of entry into the United States, state bird, flower, flag, major tourist attractions, famous people born there, etc.

If time permits, allows students to request visitor information from each state. Usually they will send packets of information to tourists. See if you can connect with a school in each of the states and ask that they would send you information about what they like to do in their free time there on a postcard from their city.

This can be combined with math as well. Have students decide on where in that state they would like to stay for a 3 day vacation and figure out how much it would cost including hotel, travel, meals, and local attractions.

After giving students plenty of time in class to do the project set it up in the gym and invite the rest of the school to come and travel around the country. This is another great way to get parents involved in education!