1. Teacher Guide
This lesson is designed to teach kids to ask a critical thinking question that you can’t just put into a search box to solve. To do that, we encourage them with smaller questions that search can help them answer. Make sure that you read the notes for each slide: they not only give you teaching tips but also provide answers and hints so you can help the kids if they are having trouble.
Remember, you can always send feedback to the Bing in the Classroom team at You can learn more about the program at bing.com/classroom and follow the daily lessons on our Partners In Learning site.
Want to extend today’s lesson? Consider using Skype in the Classroom to arrange for your class to chat with another class in today’s location. And if you are using Windows 8, you can also use the Bing apps to learn more about this location and topic; the Travel and News apps in particular make great teaching tools.
Ja'Dell Davis is a Los Angeles native who currently divides her time between New York City and Madison, Wisconsin. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, pursing a PhD in Sociology. Ja’Dell previously taught high school in Philadelphia public schools, and implemented college access and academic enrichment programming in Chester, Pennsylvania and New York City in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. Ja’Dell received her B.A. from Swarthmore College with a special major in History and Educational Studies, and a minor in Black Studies. She completed her M.S.Ed in Secondary School Education at the University of Pennsylvania.  In addition to her studies and work in the education field, Ja’Dell is a dancer, musician, avid people watcher, and Scrabble enthusiast.
This lesson is designed to teach the Common Core State Standard: Reading: Informational Text
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.1Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.2Determine two or more central ideas in a text and analyze their development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.7.4Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.

2. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?
© Dan Ballard/Corbis
Having this up as kids come in is a great settle down activity. You can start class by asking them for thoughts about the picture or about ideas on how they could solve the question of the day.

3. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?
One of the most distinctive features of Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado is the variety of ecosystems it hosts. Thanks to the varying elevations of the sub-ranges within the park, a visitor can experience forests and grasslands at lower levels, alpine woods at the midrange, and tundra conditions just before the snowline.
Even traveling east-to-west across the Continental Divide means a shift from dry, open lands on the east to dense, wet forests on the western slopes. It’s the type of place you could return to year after year and discover something new each time.
With the park celebrating 100 years of operation today, it’s a good reminder to put Rocky Mountain National Park on the “to do” list for great American wilderness visits – even if you’ve been here before.
Depending on time, you can either have students read this silently to themselves, have one of them read out loud, or read it out loud yourself.

4. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?1
Web Search
What is a continent? Name all of the continents. 2
What is a continental divide? Do all continents have them? 3
Map/Image Search
Find Rocky Mountain National Park. Name the continental divide near the park. 4
Image Search
Find an image of the continental divide that is near rocky mountain national park 5
Find the other divides in North America and name them.
There are a couple of ways to use this slide, depending on how much technology you have in your classroom. You can have students find answers on their own, divide them into teams to have them do all the questions competitively, or have each team find the answer to a different question and then come back together. If you’re doing teams, it is often wise to assign them roles (one person typing, one person who is in charge of sharing back the answer, etc.)

5. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?5
Minutes
You can adjust this based on how much time you want to give kids. If a group isn’t able to answer in 5 minutes, you can give them the opportunity to update at the end of class or extend time.

6. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?1
Web Search
What is a continent? Name all of the continents. 2
What is a continental divide? Do all continents have them? 3
Map/Image Search
Find Rocky Mountain National Park. Name the continental divide near the park. 4
Image Search
Find an image of the continental divide that is near rocky mountain national park 5
Find the other divides in North America and name them.
You can ask the students verbally or let one of them come up and insert the answer or show how they got it. This way, you also have a record that you can keep as a class and share with parents, others.

7. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?1
Web Search
What is a continent? Name all of the continents.
(Possible queries: “what is a continent”)
From About Education (
A continent is one of several major land masses on the earth. There is no standard definition for the number of continents but you will commonly find that the numbers six or seven are used.
Many consider there to be seven continents - Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. Most students in the United States are taught that there are seven continents.
European Division of Continents
In Europe and other parts of the world, many students are taught of six continents, where North and South America are combined to form a single continent of America.

8. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?2
Web Search
What is a continental divide? Do all continents have them?
(Possible queries: “what is a continental divide” “continental divides”)
From National Geographic (
A continental divide is a mountainous ridge on a continent. On one side of the divide, all the water generated from snowfall feeds into rivers that flow to an ocean, bay, or sea. The rivers on the other side of the divide feed into a different ocean, bay, or sea.
Continental divides can be found on every continent. If a continent borders more than two bodies of water, it may have more than one continental divide. North America, for example, has between three and five continental divides.

9. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?3
Map/Image Search
Find Rocky Mountain National Park. Name the continental divide near the park.
Using the “maps” link on the Bing search page, and the search term “rocky mountain national park”, find the location here:
Compare the location to an image of the continental divides in North America by searching in “images” using the search term “continental divides north America”:
Students should see that the continental divide nearest to the park is the Great Divide.

10. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?4
Image Search
Find an image of the continental divide that is near rocky mountain national park
Using the “images” link, and the search term “continental divide north America”, find images that will show this continental divide here:

11. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?5
Web Search
Find the other divides in North America and name them.
(Possible queries: “continental divides north America”)
A web search also leads to images that have all of the continental divides in North America labeled:
The continental divides listed are:
Great Divide
Laurentian Divide
Arctic Divide
St. Lawrence Divide
Eastern Divide
Great Basin Divide

12. How can we identify locations around the world based on continental divides?
This slide is a chance to summarize the information from the previous slides to build your final answer to the question.