This page will help your group to organise your project.

1. Choose your explorer.   Ask your teacher to label nine floppy disks with the names of  the nine explorers from the Resource Page.  Put the labelled floppies in a box.  One member of your team should pick a floppy disk.   Keep this labelled disk to save your group's work.  You will also need a folder for the information you collect. 

2. Print one worksheet for each member of your group.

3. Assign jobs to your group and then start researching.  These are suggested jobs for the members of your group.

• The explorer's life:  Write the facts but you could also include interviews with imaginary friends and family members etc.

• Reasons for his journey of exploration:  Write the real reasons but you could also include imaginary interviews, letters, newspaper reports etc.

  Get pictures, maps and navigation instruments. You can draw or copy these from books, cd roms or the internet.  How would you make a navigational instrument? Write a wordsearch/crossword puzzle.  Click here for a blank map of the world.

  Explorer's achievements and impact on the countries he discovered.  Write the facts but you could also include imaginary newspaper reports or a letter of complaint from the native people.  You could include a timeline.

  Life aboard ship and ship design: Write the facts but you could also include interviews with sailors or an interview with the ship's doctor.  Download and draw pictures of different ships.  Could you make a model ship?  Make a wordsearch using words for parts of the ship.

4. The Explorer Resource Pages will give you useful internet links.   You could print the information you find or cut and paste the information into a word document.  Save the pictures on your floppy disk.

5. There is a special explorer bookshelf in the classroom library and don't forget the history and encyclopedia CD-Roms in the computer room.   You could also visit your school or local library.  You may photocopy or scan the information, maps and pictures to use later.  Make a note of which books etc.  you used for your bibliography.

6. Publish your work.  Show a first draft to another group and then to your teacher for editing before you print the final copy.  Don't forget:

• Use any word processing or publishing package you wish.

• Print on A4 sized paper and leave a wider margin on the left hand side for binding.

• Illustrate your work.  You may draw on the page after the work has been printed or insert pictures using the computer program.

for worksheet  

for Explorer Resource page

for a blank world map