Teacher

This web site follows the format and sequence of WebQuests. It developed after I, Jane Smith, worked as a supply teacher with a class of Year 5 children on the Geography topic of St Lucia. My remit was to include as much ICT as possible. A large proportion of ten morning sessions covered this work.

The class had access to a computer suite but did not have access to the internet until the final stages. Some of the activities were carried out successfully with them as class activities. The majority have been developed since. The children also began to gather information to create a database on 'The Caribbean Islands' using Encarta as the major source of information then making up missing information through the internet once access was available.

I decided to develop the theme of attracting visitors to Anse La Raye after reading about the 'pro-poor tourism' project. Here is a direct quote from WorlAware Global Eye Issue 17, Spring 2002 magazine. (N.B. The village name appears as both Anse La Raye and Anse Le Raye. I have kept it as La Raye)

"The people of St Lucia are taking part in a ‘pro poor tourism' project called the St Lucia Heritage Tourism Programme.’ By developing a new branch of tourist the project could change the face of tourism on the whole island.
In the past tourism in St Lucia has concentrated in certain areas where there are all-inclusive resorts owned by a few large operators and where cruise ship passengers come onshore for a brief visit. People living elsewhere on the island received few of the benefits of their visitors.
Working in partnership with local communities, the government is developing new cultural attractions that take advantage of the skills of poorer communities in farming, fishing, cooking and arts & crafts. By diversifying the island's attractions, the project hopes to tempt tourists out, of their resorts and encourage passengers to stay on the island for longer. At the same time the attractions promote the island's culture, so their visitors learn that there is more to St Lucia than sun, sea and sand.
One part of the project is a seafood extravaganza at Anse Le Raye. Here, tourists can sample the taste of St Lucia cuisine cooked by local chefs. Whilst their visitors enjoy the food, local communities can make a profit. Working together in planning these attractions strengthens community spirit too.
With more money in their pockets, local people are likely to spend more on other goods and services, giving the entire economy a boost. But to ensure success in the long term, EU funding of the project pays for training people in business and marketing skills. This way, local communities can develop high quality attractions that meet international health and safety standards. Also, these new skills enable local people to stand on their own two feet, giving them a better chance of competing with the more experienced tour operators even when project funds have dried up.
Progress is slow as it takes time to change the well established pattern of resort and cruise ship activities. Nevertheless, communities involved in the 'St Lucia Heritage Tourism Programme” are better off than before."

I have therefore set the task of creating resources to help an imaginary family living in Anse La Raye encouraging visitors to come and stay in ordinary family homes in the village, and offering the chance for them to see the 'real St Lucia'.

It may form the major part of your work on St Lucia.
It may compliment your class work and children work in groups on the six major areas.
You may use it to extend some groups who select just one or two of the major areas.
It can be used to supplement any class work on St Lucia where you dip into it for ideas and resources.
The original activities were whole class activities and are listed below. Lesson plans are included but they are not necessarily good! Feel free to adapt them.
It may simply be a source of good web site addresses!

The six major areas and further six minor areas are listed on the Brief and Investigation pages.

You might find it useful to carry these out with the class but reference has been made to most of them in the investigation pages so groups can attempt them.

This activity does not appear on the pupil's investigation page as the text needs to be adapted before use.

It was copied and pasted in Word and adapted slightly to make it more accessible and a few positional clues added. Children had access to maps from WorlAware Global Eye Issue 17, Spring 2002 magazine which did not provide all the place names so they had to deduce their position leading to good mapping skills. You might decide to provide a more detailed map.

Lesson Plan Please adapt it. I do not pretend it is wonderful! It will open in a new window.

This activity orriginally referred to a large official government document about building hurricane safe houses,which is now offline. However I have now provided the pictures and captions extracted from it. Children should be able to extract enough information to understand how houses need to be built. I have used these as resources to create a poster for a building firm offereing 'hurricane safe houses'. The activity could be developed into a full blown D&T project on shelters. The images are available here.
I would be delighted to see examples of any results!

There was an excellent resource on the BBC web site providing long term information about holiday destinations and similar information for various cities in Britain. It has now gone off line. These provided detailed and usable information for comparing weather. I have provided the information for Birmingham. It provided resources for children interpreting information, first from tables and then from charts.They then moved on to producing charts/graphs of their own, always providing comments about them- not just producing pretty charts to display!

The minimum temperature in St. Lucia is higher than the temperature in Birmingham and in St. Lucia it is 20 difference and in Birmingham it is 100 difference.
In May there are less rainy days in Birmingham than St. Lucia by five days.
In Birmingham there are less wet days than in St. Lucia.
There are more wet days in St. Lucia than Birmingham.
There is more rainfall in St. Lucia than in Birmingham. etc. etc.

This very popular activity covers several areas of the curriculum and may introduce children to a different way of using paint programs.

read a full description of a visit to the rainforest,
identify place names
find and mark them on a map, either a hard copy or copied and pasted into a paint programme
mark a route
adapt route from castries to Anse La Raye

The supermarket Waitrose supports farmers in St Lucia. They gave me permission to adapt some articles. The children used them as a basis for producing 'radio interviews' with the banana farmers.

These are the adapted articles.

Article 1

Article 2

Learn.co.uk have produced some useful activities on Fair Trade.
(2005: Currently being updated but worth checking from time to time! You may have access to Learn Premium through your school.)

Oxfam have a comprehensive site 'Bonkers About Bananas'. There are links to it from the children's pages but you may wish to refer to it more fully.

Possible book for developing the theme.

The Banana Game Instructions for a class game that traces the journey of the banana from South America to the supermarket. Produced by Banana Link

The Geographical Association has a frequently updated page of weblinks to St Lucia some of which are not included on this venture so do check it out. They also have an online shop with a very good selection of materials, for the topic, many of which are new resources. Put 'St Lucia' in the search box.

World Aware have produced wonderful online resources. Unfortunately, having lost their funding, it is no longer possible to purchase resources from them.

provides links to the most relevant resources. These have provided resources in several areas of this quest.

Oxfordshire have created an excellent project for St Lucia and KS2. I have often used their material in the links.

Suffolk County Council have also provided a wealth of resources. Scroll down to see all the links.

'This new resource, designed specifically for junior children, replaces the Ordnance Survey St Lucia World Map, which is now out of print.

Colourful and easy to read, the new map shows all the features which junior children will need for their St Lucia locality study. Roads, towns, rivers, mountains, bays and points, and airports are clearly indicated, and simplified colour coded relief shows hilly and mountainous areas. The clear, simple key also indicates land use and activities.

The inset map of Castries shows St Lucia's capital city in more detail.'

There is a very detailed map of the island available online at http://www.caribbean-on-line.com/sl/slmap.shtml. It can also be provided by the St Lucia Tourist Board, 1 Collingham Gardens, London, SW5 0HW. They will send you a pack of useful pamphlets and a few of these maps. I laminated mine.

Do look at the many valuable resources available to you through the UK version of webquests. This page will take you to the National Curriculum subjects. This will lead you to a shorter webquest on St Lucia. Some of the sites are different and very useful too.

Very useful web sites suddenly disappear! That is beyond my control. If you discover broken links please contact me on info@net-ferret.com so I can adapt the site.

Please do let me know if you have found this useful, can think of ways to improve it or have found other possible sites.

I really would like to know of any results of using this site and if you are happy to do so, will display examples for others to see. Please send examples, photographs of displays etc.