Using a Scavenger Hunt For Creative Lesson Plans

Whether you are a public school teacher, a privatehunts outside of the school walls such as in the school
school teacher, tutor or homeschooling parentgarden, as a way to get your students familiar with the
scavenger hunts can be used to spice up your lessonlibrary or computer lab, or in an outdoor education
planning. They can be a fun way to introduce a newsetting. They are the perfect way to get your students
theme or topic. They can also be used as a goodactively engaged in the lesson in a more hands-on and
review or to reinforce a lesson.experiential fashion.
First you need to decide if the hunt will take place inWhen the learning is more experiential in nature,
the classroom, at home for homework or around thestudents are able to understand the concepts in much
school grounds.more real and tangible way. So when you are
Then, decide if you want your students to work onbrainstorming your clues, make them as active and
their own, in pairs or in groups.engaging as possible. For example, if you are preparing
Next, get creative. Decide what concepts or statea fun math game, have the students solve a math
standards that you want to introduce or reinforce andproblem to get the next scavenger hunt clue location.
come up with scavenger hunt clues that fit this theme.Here are a few more examples of ways to use a
This is the fun part, but it can also be the mostscavenger hunt with students: a dictionary game,
challenging. You may need to think about having thenewspaper scavenger hunt, a supermarket hunt and a
hunt beyond the classroom walls.nature scavenger hunt.
Beyond? Yep, that's right. You can also use scavenger