I swear I don’t know where my neice’s teacher comes up with these.
US forces built an airstrip here during WWII
Formed by a coral reef
US and Britain used it as a nuclear test site
discovered in 1777
5 people speak gilbetese (sp?)
Any help? And if you foind this one, PLEASE tell me how to find this obscure crap, and how a 7th grade teacher could possibly expect a 12 y/o to find this w/o internet access
Ok, punch gilbetese into google. It says “did you mean gilbertese?”. Search for gilbertese. Discover Kiribati. Terrain, check. Nuclear testing, check. Discovered 1777, check.
Christmas Islands - Kiribati
Oops hit submit too soon. Search for kiribati coral nuclear 1777, discover Christmas Island
God, you guys are good!!! I’m still trying to learn google-speak, more of an Ask.com guy still.
Kiribati, pronounced “keer-ree-bahss” is how the word “Gilberts” sounds in gilbertese. Likewise, Christmas Island comes out as “Kiritimati” in gilbertese.
Hmm… let’s see that assignment…
Identifiers 1 and 2 could mean almost anywhere in the WW2 Pacific Theatre of operations.
Identifier 3 would be a better starting point in the old-fashioned paper-encyclopedia world. Read enough articles on the history of nuclear testing, and focus on island testing, and you will run into Bikini, Eniwetok, and Christmas Island. Yet 1 and 2 are still worthless there.
In the absence of a parsing search engine, the date in Identifier 4 is only useful at the end, to confirm, but you’d aloms have to already be reading the article on the history of Christmas Island to find it
Ientifier 5 pretty much requires you start with a really thick dictionary that will even bother to include this seldom-used word, and tell you it means of or referring to the Gilbert Islands. Then it would be a short hop-and-skip to find you need to go to the Encyclopedia article on the nation of Kiribati. Combine knowledge gleaned from #5 and #3 with confirmation of #4 in the article on Christmas (Kirimati) Island.
BTW there is ANOTHER Christmas Island, an Australian dependency entirely unrelated to Kirimati. THAT could be a pitfall in the research if the student does not pause to think it may be more than one place with that name.
So, a non-internet kid would need access to:
A good thorough dictionary
A current copy of the World Almanac
A decent encyclopedia or even better two or three of them, including one higher-end one
Some background info from the general course on geography so far, to at least give a notion of what is the general thrust (e.g. that 1 and 2 means it’s a South Pacific location)
Just to add that the official name these days is Kiritimati, which is the local spelling of “Christmas”. It helps to stop confusion with the other Christmas Island.
And Gilbertese is known as I-Kiribati these days.