Apply and Discover 10.1

Gabrien's WebQuest on writing narrative essays is an excellent example of a teacher maintaining the same high standards for all students while differentiating the methods students may take to reach those goals.  At every step of the way, Gabrien points out the ways in which students can adjust this process to meet their own learning needs.  From offering definitions in several ways, to providing visual cues, to including examples through text and audio, students have multiple opportunities to tailor the lessons to their own learning styles.  I especially like that many students will see a practical use for this lesson in the form of college application essays, as it is designed for use with high school juniors and seniors. Through the WebQuest, Gabrien sets the tone of the unit as one that will includes both seriousness and a little humor—a perfect combination for the topic of narrative essays, as the best writing of this type includes a sincere message mixed with a few laughs. As a fellow English teacher, I can definitely see using this WebQuest in my own classroom.  

I was very curious to see Maureen’s WebQuest on folk tales because I wanted to see how such an activity would be adapted for lower grade levels.  Maureen kept the language and sentence structure simple and easy to understand, so her second grade students would be able to understand the task, process, and other aspects of the WebQuest.  Also, at the bottom of the home page, she included the directions to “Click on Task.”  This is a small step, but stood out to me as something important to help young students who would not be familiar with a navigation bar.  Older students, who have more experiences navigating sites online, would see the navigation bar and automatically know to click on the next page, but younger students need that extra direction to be successful with this format.  I thought the process page was very clearly laid out and the pictures next to each step would help visual learners move through each part of the process.  Maureen’s use of italics and bold are also effective ways to help focus students’ attention on the most important information in the text.  Providing YouTube links to audio text was essential in this case since Maureen points out that the reading level of the text may be above some students’ reading ability.  By providing the audio, she is able to stretch her students to use more advanced texts, but still make them accessible and understandable.  Maureen made students’ expectations and roles very clear by describing what each student in the group would work on.  She mentions that assigning each student to a role could be either student- or teacher-chosen.  As a teacher, I would probably lean towards choosing the roles for students because that would allow me to match the tasks to ability level of the student (working on the moral, for example, requires inference, so that would be a more difficult task than some of the others). Overall, this WebQuest would appeal to many different kinds of learners, was very clear, and would be accessible to young students.  

Michelle’s WebQuest on the Iditarod is an example of unit that encompasses many different language arts standards, and hits all the major areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.  She included a nice combination of whole class, individual, and partner activities, so that students would have a balanced experience of classroom activities.  One thing that I especially liked about Michelle’s topic is that it relates to real-world event, and by having students research a musher and write a letter, they are constantly reminded that this is not just something that exists in a text, but has real people (and animals) involved.   This must increase student motivation.  Knowing that their letters are sent to a real audience would increase students’ drive to write a clear and correct piece.   And learning about and making a connection with the mushers must make their stake in the debate stronger.  There were a few things that I thought were particularly good about Michelle’s WebQuest design and unit planning.  First, the directions for the letter were very clear in indicating exactly what students should include in terms of content, which would be especially helpful for students who struggle with writing.  Also, she used rubrics that were familiar to students, which would increase their understanding of the expectations. Lastly, I liked that on the conclusion page, she included additional links for students to explore.  This provides students who finish the material at a faster pace an activity to extend their learning.  I would expect that this WebQuest would have very good results in the classroom.