Westward HO! is a five week classroom project and online event! In the first week, you will organize your learners for the adventure, helping them assume real identities, organize into wagon families, pack their belongings, buy their supplies, and acquire background knowledge of the period.

The second, third, and fourth weeks are structured by the Travel and FATE cards. Your class will travel along the Oregon Trail through the Travel and FATE scenarios. The Travel and FATES provide opportunity for simulated experiences, further research, and authentic collaboration by your student wagon families. Your students will participate in making cooperative decisions that decide their fate on the Oregon Trail.

Each week, an online student TRAIL MEETING is held. Conducted by the Wagonmistress as a guided discussion, the meeting allows students to share, in character, the week's trail decisions, adventures, disasters and triumphs. In weeks two through five, this meeting is used, as well, to make an important trail decision together, as a Wagontrain.

During their five weeks "on the trail" students can: trade and barter for livestock or needed supplies, offer their hand in marriage or seek a sweetheart or spouse, look for work or offer jobs to others, by posting their needs at the "Pioneer Trading Post." They can share news of their life on the trail and their adventures on the "Pioneer Bulletin Board."

Encourage your pioneers to keep and publish trail journals and/or family stories. Have them participate in side trips selected from our suggestions or developed by you to meet your particular curricular needs. Dress in costume, sing, play games of yore, square dance, perform, cook, sew, and immerse your class in the adventure. This is engagement in "reliving history"!