Organisation

What?

Backpack Bear encourages Australia's primary school students to learn about their nation, its history, its people and its places through a series of quizzes about Australia and Australians.

Students work as individuals or in teams to answer a weekly quiz of 20 questions.

Responses are sent to the Quest Co-ordinator and progress is recorded as the students make their way around Australia.

Why?

Backpack Bear encourages students to

develop and extend their knowledge about Australia and Australians

develop and consolidate their knowledge and use of the Information Literacy Process

learn to construct. check and send emails following accepted netiquette and practice

work co-operatively with members of their team

consolidate their maths skills by maintaining a record of their own progress

For specific outcomes, please view the Outcomes page.

Who?

The quest is most suitable for students in the upper primary years.

It can be conducted on a personal or team basis. Experience shows that teams of three or four are the most successful combinations. During this time of online learning, teams could comprise a family.

Teams will need email access as well as supervised Internet access as many of the questions will require them to search online using appropriate keyword and phrases.

Each team will need a unique team name.

Each team needs to appoint a member to be responsible for the following...

• checking for the new questions each week, and distributing these to team members

• getting everyone's answers together, making sure the team members agree and collating these

• emailing the group's answers to the Quest Co-ordinator before the closing date each week.

It is a good idea to rotate the various jobs so that everyone has a turn at everything.

Teams need to understand that this is an ongoing weekly commitment.

Each group of teams will need a Quest Co-ordinator whose role is to share the link to the quizzes, receive and mark responses and maintain a record of each group's progress. It is their decision if and how to share progress scores.

How?

Quests usually consist of 8-10 quizzes to maximise momentum - it is strongly advised that a quest NOT be interrupted by school holidays.

Quizzes are posted online and completed weekly.

Each quiz consists of 20 questions and all questions will be about Australia or Australians.

There will also be a longer bonus question about an Australian identity or place.

The aim is to complete a journey around Australia by earning enough points to complete each leg.

Each question answered correctly earns the team 1 point, but if the spelling and punctuation is correct, teams earn 2 points for each correct answer. The Bonus Question is worth 5 points. Thus, there are 45 points on offer each week.

For an 8-week challenge teams will need to average 30 points each week to keep on target to complete the challenge.

For a 10-week challenge teams will need to average 24 points each week to keep on target to complete the challenge.

Scores are tallied each week and progress charted on the progress chart.

When a team earns 240 points the journey around Australia is complete and members are awarded a certificate.

Responses are emailed to the Quest Co-ordinator by the agreed closing day each week so they can be marked and progress recorded. All marking is done by the Quest Co-ordinator

There is no need to register to participate.

When?

There are 10 quizzes posted so schools can undertake this quest at any time.

Answers to the quizzes are also provided so the Quest Co-Ordinator can mark according to their timeframe and schedule.

Setting one quiz per week seems to be the optimum with the same days being set for access, submission and so forth.

Experience shows that momentum is maintained if the quest is conducted over a term without breaks.