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Lewiston, Idaho
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Asking the right question can open the door to student learning. That's been the experience of Steven Branting, an award-winning teacher and consultant in gifted education. Whether he's designing a Webquest about a forensic science mystery, explaining how to use the sextant for navigation, or helping students use sophisticated mapping software to analyze historical trends in their community, he starts by posing an open-ended question designed to promote deep thinking. His students from Jenifer Junior High recently harnessed new technologies to investigate an old mystery: When the city moved its old cemetery more than a century ago, what happened to the original graves?
Lewiston, a city of about 30,000 located at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, got its start during Idaho's 19th-century gold rush. Today, Normal Hill Park offers residents a popular gathering place. But back in the 1860s, this was the site for the city's first burial ground. By the 1880s, as new buildings went up in the neighborhood known as Normal Hill, city fathers decided to move the cemetery to a new, larger site farther from the center of town.
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Students used handheld GPS units to fix coordinates.
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