Literary Scavenger Hunt

Before class, you'll need to develop a list of questions for the scavenger hunt. Sample questions are provided below, but you might want to modify this list to reflect your particular curriculum. If so, here are a few guidelines:

For the scavenger hunt, group the students in teams of two. Give each team a set of the Student activity pages and the list of questions.

Set a deadline for the hunt itself (such as one class period), and tell the students that they will have additional time to create their PowerPoint shows.

Inform students that each team will have the opportunity to present their finished PowerPoint presentation to the class. Students will then vote to decide the winning team. Remind the students that they should base their vote on content as well as design of the presentations.

In Word, type a neat list of all your scavenger hunt questions, with paragraph returns and no blank lines between them. (Don't number the questions―you can do that later in PowerPoint.) Save this document. You will use it for the table of contents in your slide show.

Create a separate document to collect your answers. Start by copying your question list into this document. As you find your answers, enter them as paragraphs directly beneath the questions, with no blank lines in between. At the end of each answer, include the full URL of the location where you found it.

Indent your answer paragraphs by clicking on each one and then clicking the Increase Indent button in the Formatting toolbar. When you are done, your questions should be flush left, your answers indented, and all your text should be Normal style (as indicated in the Formatting toolbar).

Start your search at the Web sites listed above. Be alert: You may run across the answer to one question while looking for another.

Keep your answers brief—no more than a few sentences.

Open your Word document. From the File menu, choose Send To and select Microsoft PowerPoint.

PowerPoint opens, displaying your newly created slide presentation in Outline view. Select Slide in the View menu and look at your slides. Each slide should have a question in the title box at the top and the corresponding answer in the text box below. Adjust font size and text box dimensions, where necessary, to make questions and answers fit.

From the Format menu, select Apply Design. Select a design you like and click OK. (You can repeat this later to change the design, if you want to.) To make additional color changes, you can select Background and Slide Color Scheme from the Format menu.

Try animating your answers. Select Slide in the View menu, and click on the answer text in slide 1. From the Slide Show menu, select a Preset Animation option. Preview your animation by selecting View Show from the Slide Show menu.

Now animate all your slides. You can even use different animation options on each slide.

Create a few slides for your interactive Table of Contents. Choose New Slide from the Insert menu. The New Slide dialog box appears. Select the Bulleted List AutoLayout and click OK. A new blank slide will be added to your presentation. Repeat this process to create two or three new slides. With either Outline or Slide Sorter selected in View, drag your new blank slides to the beginning of your show.

Go to your first slide in Slide view. Click in the title box and type a title for your show.

Go to your Word document that listed the questions only. Copy the list and paste it into the text box on slide 1.

The list of questions will probably be too long to fit on one slide. Cut the remaining questions from the bottom of the list and paste them into the text box on the second slide. Repeat this process to accommodate all the scavenger hunt questions. Print a Handout version of your slide show (6 slides per page) to refer to for the following steps.

Now you can add a button next to each question in the table of contents that will link directly to the chosen slide.

Action Buttons make it easy to navigate through you PowerPoint show.

Add three more navigation buttons to each slide:

Now you can present your scavenger hunt results in an exciting, fully interactive PowerPoint show. Present it to your class with pride!