The following webquest is one designed for 5th and 6th graders on the 13 colonies. http://www.tesd.k12.pa.us/vfms/shaughnessy/intro.htmThis is a very well organized, informative webquest that allows students to transfer information learned through web research into a poster and then presentation in the classroom. This allows students to learn a variety of skills and information during through the same activity. The webquest is well organized into 5 sections that are on separate web pages, but all have easily accessible links to each other. Students will not find difficulty navigating the site. It is also a fun premise in that each student becomes a historian on one colony and must report to the King of England who is coming to the colonies. The weaknesses that I see are that the Process section has too much in it, and it includes explanations of the Tasks. This could be solved by renaming the categories and possibly splitting the Process section into a Research and a Report section. Students would do better with two smaller tasks split over multiple days than the one potentially overwhelming task of doing research and making a presentation based on it. Splitting it up may help. Students could also work in pairs in order to practice sharing information on a group project. Having a template for recording the research found may be helpful as student learn to organize their research. This could be a skill that is encouraged, but that students learn to use through practice. The teacher would be required to make a worksheet/template for research. He/She would also need to figure out how students will be split up, and what the requirements are. There is a provided rubric, but it may need to be edited a bit. Having access to a computer is necessary to complete the webquest, unless you turned it into a library based research project instead of a web based research project. Then students could just find books on the colonies in the library. This may defeat the purpose of learning the available resources of the web.
13 Colonies Webquest
February 18th, 2008 · 2 Comments
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1
Karen R
// Mar 21, 2008 at 11:43 am
Sounds like an interesting webquest. I like your idea of dividing the long process section into smaller sections. Elementary students need lots of support as they embark on longer projects. While I would encourage you to use the computer resources, there is no problem with supplementing with books and other resources as well.
2
KarenR
// Mar 30, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Your reflections on the webquest are excellent. There isn’t anything wrong with including library books along with web-based resources although the creators of the webquest did consider them a way to help students learn more about using the web.
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