Goal:

Students choose an expedition to research, form expedition teams, keep individual diaries and compare diaries at the end of simulated expedition.

Grade Level:

7-12

Objectives:

Identify and use different source documents for research

Analyze and evaluate the information in source documents

Compare types of sources to each other and to other types, e.g., letters to diaries to official records, and assess utility

Use source documents to create comparable but fictional accounts of an expedition

Subject Area or Standard:

History, Creative Writing

Materials Needed:

• Internet access or printed documents from the various expeditions
• Maps and globes
  

Websites:

Simulations of Transits from 1631 through 2004
http://www.venus-transit.de/TransitMotion/index.htm
American Transit of Venus Expeditions, 1882
http://www/aas/prg/publications/baas/v27n4/aas187/S034002.html
Drawings of the Transit of Venus by Captain James Cook and Charles Green
http://star.arm.ac.uk/history/transit.html
The 1874 Expedition
http://www.melbourneobservatory.com/19thCentury.htm
The Voyage of the Endeavor 1769
http://www.melbourneobservatory.com/18thCentury.htm
The 1769 Transit of Venus, The Baja California Observations
http://www.nhm.org/research/publications/Baja_Cal_Travel/baja46.html
The Endeavor Journals and an interactive map
http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/southseas
Budget of US Naval Observatory for previous transits
http://www.usno.navy.mil/pao/History/key_legislation.shtml
The South Seas Project
http://www.jcu.edu.au/aff/history/southseas/biogs/P000085b.htm
Letters from Mr. Ward V. Ranger of the Transit of Venus Expedition to China
http://web.syr.edu/-rcranger/wardv.html

Resources:

Chasing Venus
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Exhibition, March 2004 to January 2005, Smithsonian Institution Libraries Gallery, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC

Chasing Venus
Smithsonian Institution Libraries Online Exhibition, March 2004 to January 2005, http://www.sil.si.edu/exhibitions/Chasing-Venus.htm

Procedures:

1.Students form expedition teams and choose one of the expeditions for research.
2. Students read accounts of the various expeditions and look at source documents from the internet and the Smithsonian "Chasing Venus" display
3. Individually, student will role play an expedition member and keep a diary of the travels and of the actual Transit.
4. Students present highlights from their diaries and compare to diaries of team members and to diaries from other teams.

Alternatives:

Students participate with students from other countries in the ESO global transit project. Note: Requires teacher sponsorship and notification of ESO in advance.
http://www.eso.org