Apple Learning Interchange - The National Park Project

Before students could select a National Park to research, they needed to familiarize themselves with that various parks! We used a layer in Google Earth that shows all the locations of the US National Parks. The layer has some basic information about each park along with links to images and webpages.

To locate this layer on Google Earth:

Layers: uncheck Layers

Toggle open Borders and Labels > check borders, labels

Toggle open Places of Interest

Toggle Parks and Recreation Areas > check US National Parks

I gave each student a worksheet where they could list the names of the parks they discovered, their location, and a one or two word description.

At the end of this activity, I let students sign up for a park that they would research. Every person or team had to select a different park.

(Here is a screenshot showing what the National Park information page looks like in Google Earth.)

Click above to download the worksheet attachment for recording the National Park information from Google Earth. (You are welcome to adapt this worksheet to meet your needs.)

Once students had learned more about many of the National Parks, I let them sign up for the park they wanted to research. The first time I did the project, each student worked individually on a park; the second time the students worked in groups of two. We did not repeat any of the parks.

Click on the attachment below to download a sign up list of the U.S. National Parks.