25 Internet Scavenger Hunt Questions for Middle School (With Answers)
An internet scavenger hunt is one of the easiest ways to teach research skills without a single lecture. Students race to find answers online, and along the way they learn to search smarter, skim for information and check whether a source can be trusted. Here are 25 questions you can use tomorrow, with an answer key at the bottom.
How to run an internet scavenger hunt
Pair students up. One searches, one records, and they switch every five questions.
Ask for the source. For every answer, students write down the website they used. That one rule turns a fun race into a real lesson on reliable sources.
Set a time limit. Thirty to forty minutes keeps the energy up.
Debrief. Which questions were hardest to find? Which websites did students trust, and why? Did anyone find two different answers?
No devices for everyone? Run it as a station activity, or project one question at a time and let groups race on a shared device.
25 internet scavenger hunt questions
Canada
1. In what year did Canada become a country?
2. Which Canadian invented the game of basketball?
3. In which Ontario city did Alexander Graham Bell come up with the idea for the telephone?
4. What is the coldest temperature ever recorded in Canada, and where was it recorded?
5. Who was the first Canadian astronaut in space?
6. Which bird appears on the Canadian one-dollar coin?
7. Who is the Canadian civil rights activist on the vertical $10 bill?
8. How many time zones does Canada have?
9. Which two Canadians are credited with the discovery of insulin in 1921?
10. What is Canada's largest province by area?
Science and nature
11. How many bones are in the adult human body?
12. How many hearts does an octopus have?
13. Which element has the chemical symbol Au?
14. About how long does it take light from the Sun to reach Earth?
15. What is the hardest natural substance on Earth?
16. About what percentage of Earth's water is fresh water?
17. What is a baby kangaroo called?
18. What do you call a group of crows?
The world
19. What is the capital of Australia?
20. What is the smallest country in the world?
21. Which continent has no permanent human residents?
22. What is the national animal of Scotland?
23. What is the tallest mountain in the world above sea level, and how tall is it?
24. Who wrote the novel Anne of Green Gables?
25. What are Canada's official national winter and summer sports?
Extension ideas
Write your own. Each student writes three questions for a classmate. Good questions are harder to write than they look.
Fact or fiction? Mix in a few false statements and have students prove them wrong with a reliable source.
Rank the sources. Students compare two websites that gave the same answer and decide which one they trust more.
Want ready-made hunts?
These internet scavenger hunts come with 25 to 50 questions, answer keys, extension activities and, in many cases, a Google Forms version:
Answer key
1867 (Confederation, July 1)
James Naismith, who was born in Almonte, Ontario
Brantford
−63 °C, at Snag, Yukon, on February 3, 1947
Marc Garneau, in 1984
The common loon (that's why it's called the "loonie")
Viola Desmond
Six
Frederick Banting and Charles Best
Quebec
206
Three
Gold
About 8 minutes and 20 seconds
Diamond
About 3%
A joey
A murder
Canberra
Vatican City
Antarctica
The unicorn
Mount Everest, 8,849 metres
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Ice hockey (winter) and lacrosse (summer)
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