Tips for Doing the Landmark Project in Your Classroom

This is a suggestion for classes new to the Landmark Project. There are many ways to manage this activity, and I want to share how we do it in a grade 4 class.

Class Team:

For each class, there is usually just one team known to the project, for example my class is Team Smith.

But internally, I create several groups of kids with a good lead person in each group to be the Captain.  In my class I have groups 1, 2, 3, and 4 and among these groups I divide up the landmarks to make the searching more manageable.

For example if there are 20 landmarks, I would do as follows:

Group1: Landmarks 1-5
Group2: Landmarks 6-10
Group3: Landmarks 11-15
Group4: Landmarks 16-20 

…. and so forth depending on the actual number of Landmarks

Group Organization:
I have each of the groups keep a folder of the school landmarks they are searching for as well as the questions they send out each week and the answers they receive. As the project proceeds, the groups track their answers and write down what they are finding in research to help locate the unknown landmark. The key is keeping a good folder of information - I usually have the group Captain keep the folder. We do Landmark officially about 3 times each week (at least 1 hour), and then in any other spare moments when kids finish their work.

All clues from Landmark players 1-5 would be kept in the Group 1 folder.

All clues from Landmark players 6-10 would be kept in the Group 2 folder.

Over the 3-week period, some groups might begin helping other groups as needed.

At the end of week 3, the folder should contain all of the Final Guesses to be sent in to the project. Remember, we do not send guesses during the game, only questions that can be answered with a YES or a NO.