Share Fair!

Share Fair Activity: 

I took a class last semester (Psychology in Teaching) in which I decided to create a WebQuest in an attempt to establish more of a constructivist learning environment in my computer lab. This was my first time making and implementing a WebQuest, and now that my project is finished I can say that there are many parts of it I’m not particularly happy with. I’m pretty excited to know that this class will give me another chance at making another WebQuest – hopefully I can do a much better job this time around! 

Until then, I figured I’d share this first imperfect WebQuest of mine, since it was a genuine attempt to incorporate new digital resources into my classes (and to branch out from just using Rosetta Stone with my students every day). I hope this is a relevant share! Some explanation of my teaching situation is needed, though – my students in fourth grade are allowed to pick which language they study on Rosetta Stone (Spanish, French, German, Chinese), and then they study their language on their own during our weekly classes. This means a) most of my 4th graders are just starting to learn their language (and at only 40 minutes a week, they don’t progress much) and b) since everyone’s working on a different L2 our whole-class lessons look at world cultures, not languages. I therefore made a WebQuest that would help my students get a better idea of the culture behind at least one of the languages (so I’m hoping this example of mine is a relevant share, even though I know it’s quite a stretch). 

• Target language: French 

• Target student (age, level): 4th grade (in our school’s accelerated EXCEL program), ages 9-10 

• Topic/Theme: Let’s plan a field trip to France 

• Skill focus: Culture, vocabulary 

• Objective: (here are the content objectives taken from my unit plan) 

• Students will learn to navigate provided Internet resources in order to explore different countries as potential travel destinations.
• Students will research different countries online and discover some of their unique characteristics, selecting a country to visit based on their research and then identifying a food to try, place to visit, and activity to do there.
• Students will develop and present at least one credible example (either in writing or in the form of an illustration) as to why traveling to the country in question would provide them with a valuable learning experience. 
• Students will gain an understanding as to what it’s like to plan a trip abroad by deciding on things to see, do and eat, as well as by navigating resources that calculate logistics such as the time difference and time it takes to travel to the destination. 

• Time: 4 class periods @ 40 minutes each (5 lessons total, but one was a take home assignment) 

• Software/Web address: http://fkeexcel.weebly.com

• Procedure for the activity: Each time students came to class, another “day” was added to the WebQuest describing the next task. All of the tasks in the WebQuest were united under an overarching theme of planning a class field trip to France. 

• Assessment (how will you know that students have learned?): This was a difficult one for me, mainly because I have a bit of an odd teaching context. I had no authority to grade my students’ work in my classes, which is why the main goal of this WebQuest was to raise student interest and motivation for world language and culture. I had no extrinsic motivators like a grade book to keep them on task, so I tried to give them some intrinsic motivation by letting them choose the country we’d study and then giving them new digital resources to explore. Through exploring the resources I provided they actually ended up doing a lot of the teaching during this unit. For example, I took all of the groups’ responses from day 2 (the things to see, eat, and do in France) and put them in a big list on PowerPOint slides. During the next class I showed the slides to the students, and I had the students explain the items on the list that not everyone understood. For example, when a student asked “what’s pain au chocolat?” I asked the students who submitted that response to explain what it was and what it means. One of the biggest things I would fix with this WebQuest is the way I observe and measure how much students are learning, though, so I’m at least aware that my WebQuest attempt falls flat here.