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Learning Marianas history via ‘scavenger hunt’
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Posted on May 05 2009
Nearly a hundred students from Kagman Elementary School and Chacha Oceanview Junior High School were treated to a fun, exciting, and challenging “Scavenger Hunt” at the American Memorial Park yesterday.
Working in groups, the students learned to decode numbers and words and answered puzzles and riddles—all relating to Marianas’ rich history and culture—to get the correct answers to problems.
Starting at 9am yesterday, 60 seventh graders from Chacha and over 30 fifth graders from Kagman Elementary were separated into groups of five to six members and were given instructions through sets of numbers that they needed to decode before the problem could be solved.
“It’s full of fun and very exciting!” seventh grader Frankie Blas said as soon as his group completed the task.
Blas described the activity an alternative way of enhancing their learning ability through “hunting” for answers. “All we needed to do was cooperate with one another…work as a team and have fun while hunting for the answers to the riddles!”
Keena Barcial, also a seventh grader, was amazed at how the questions were framed.
“We needed to understand fully well what’s in the riddle before we could finally look for the answer, which actually were just within the park area. This is something that made us more resourceful,” she told Saipan Tribune.
Barcial said she always looks forward to this activity every year.
Seen guiding the group hunters was AMP ranger Nancy A. Kelchner, who commended the students’ great enthusiasm and interest.
According to Chacha Oceanview teachers Hilda Joyner and Marina P. Deleon Guerrero, there were three ranger-guided programs conducted yesterday.
These included “The Battle of Saipan,” “Saipan: A Place in History,” and “Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place—Saipan’s Indigenous Population.”
War-related documentaries about the Marianas were also shown to the students as well as a tour of the American Visitor’s Center display.
