National Park Vacation

Sample Math WebQuest 2
(grades 5-9)

 
Introduction:    Your family has decided to vacation this summer in one of the following National Parks.  You are to select from the five choices, based on cost of air travel, size of the park, and height of the mountains there.

Task:  You will obtain information about airfare costs, area of the park, and height of highest mountain for each of the five parks from internet resources.  Then you will represent these data in tables and graphs.  Based on the data, your group will select a Park Vacation and present the conclusion orally to the class.

Resources:

Denali National Park:  http://www.alaska.net/~denst1/DST.home.html
Olympic National Park:  http://www.nps.gov/olym/
Shenandoah National Park:  http://www.visitshenandoah.com/
Yellowstone National Park:  http://www.Yellowstone-Natl-Park.Com/index.html  or http://www.yellowstone.net/
Yosemite National Park:  http://www.nps.gov/yose/

Airline Farefinder:  http://travel.excite.com/air/

Process:

  1. Your first group task will be to locate your five parks on a map.
  2. Then you will obtain the lowest cost airfare from the airport nearest your home to the airport nearest the park.
  3. Next, you will explore the park information to determine the area in square miles and the highest mountain.
  4. You will prepare tables of these three data for each of the five parks, and design a graph to summarize and contrast your results.
  5. You will decide which National Park to visit, and present your conclusions (with data support) to the class.


Conclusion:
 

In this activity, you will use the internet as a data source for a problem solving activity.  You will be connecting real-world travel data to analysis and representation.  You will use your reasoning skills to reach a conclusion based on the data, and will communicate your conclusions in a class presentation.

Extra:    You notice that the airfares you have found do not seem to correspond to the distance you will fly.  Find the cost per mile for several flights (distance/cost), then compare these costs.  Does there seem to be a pattern?  Research airline costs and see if you can explain other variables in addition to distance that might contribute to cost of airline tickets.