Find out about letterboxing and goecaching! It is a way to mix treasure hunt and hiking, and can be efficient for children or people who don’t see the point of going for a walk, a hike or a treck, who don’t enjoy just the pleasure of walking, breathing fresh air and being outside, but need a goal, a reward for their efforts……
In class, this text is a good material for written comprehension for students who have studied English for at least 4 years, because it deals with something nobody knows about and that the class will discover together. It will develop their skills for global comprehension, like scanning a text for information and inferring the global meaning from a few well selected clues.
And then the students can debate about the interest of this sport/hobby….and if they find it is a good idea, why not get into the project and do it in France? This could make American people want to come and visit France!
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2002/04/042202_letterbox.jhtml
Here are some links to other site dealing with the subject, that you can use to build a webquest or a treasure hunt:
http://www.letterboxing.org/index2.html
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/apr98/letterboxing.html
(from the Smithonian, a short article explaining how it started)
http://freespace.virgin.net/g.sargent/letter.htm (the origninal from Dartmoor, UK)
http://walking.about.com/library/weekly/aa073001a.htm ( with interviews from walkers to read)
http://www.geocaching.com/ (about orientation)
http://members.aol.com/Letterboxr/stamps.html (about how to carve stamps)
http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Outdoors/Letterboxing/ (a very long page of links)
– The new Hide and Go Seek !
