Process

Questions

We started our exploration by creating questions we had about our community and then categorizing the questions into topics.

We looked for books and articles to start answering our questions.  The library was the best source for this task.

We discovered that books can only tell you so much, so we made a list of people we could talk to to find out more information.  These people were both old--had been around our town a long time--and younger--like the current police chief.  Our teacher set up interviews for us with important people from our town.

Visit Museums and Sites

In order to find artifacts, we had to go out of the classroom and into the real world.  Sometimes your library has artifacts.  We went to the Orangetown Museum, our local historical site,  and the helpful guides explained the history of Pearl River to our group.  We also got to look at old artifacts and take home copies.

Analyze/Predict

After we researched the history and interviewed people to tell us the present, we analyzed what we learned and made predictions about the future of our town.