How to Teach Social Studies with Geocaching

If you are looking for a way to make social studies come to life and get your students excited about this subject, consider incorporating geocaching. Read on for some tips to help you come up with ways to teach social studies using this fun, popular hobby

What Is Geocaching?

Geocaching is a high-tech sport that involves using a handheld GPS device to locate a specific "treasure," called a geocache. In order to take students on a geocaching adventure, you will need a GPS unit and waypoints for a specific geocache. Alternatively, you can create your own geocache on the school grounds to teach a geocaching social studies class without leaving campus. Read What is Geocaching? to learn more about the specifics of geocaching and where to find lists of geocache locations in your area.

Photo Credit: sxc.hu/CMSeter

Teaching History

You may want to start off with a lesson plan covering the history of navigation. For example, you could teach students about early fishermen who followed the nearby coastline to avoid getting lost at sea, navigators who learned how to let the stars guide them, the discovery of magnetic force and the invention of the compass, finishing up with the history of the Global Positioning System.

Photo Credit: sxc.hu/weirdvis

Teach About Rules in Society

Like any society, the geocaching society follows certain rules. The three primary rules of geocaching include:

1. If you take an item from a geocache, you must leave another item of equal or greater worth.
2. Log details of your geocaching experince in the logbook at the geocache site.
3. Enter details of your geocaching hunt on the website where you located the waypoints of the geocache.

While geocaching rules are not enforced, and there are no pentalties for failing to follow these rules, discuss why these rules are important to the geocaching society and what the consequences might be if nobody chose to follow them. Teach about rules in our society and discuss why they need to exist and should be followed, aside from punishments or penalties enforced by governing bodies.

Visit a Local Historical Site

Log onto a website such as Geocaching.com and find out if there are any geocache waypoints at or near a local historical site. Teach the students about the events that took place at that location, and then bring it life as you navigate to the geocache. Incorporate test questions by marking the coordinates to a location near the beginning of your geocaching outing. At that location, have a special geocache planted with a multiple-choice question regarding the lesson. Each answer will have a corresponding waypoint, but only the correct answer will lead to the next mini-geocache.

For more information on how and why to incorporate geocaching into your social studies lessons, read How to Use Geocaching as a Classroom Teaching Tool and What Skills Does Geocaching Teach.