Assignment #6: Webquest

Assignment 6 was to create a Webquest that would engage students in a problem-solving activity using Web-based and non Web-based resources. My first and biggest obstacle in designing my Webquest was deciding upon a topic. In undergraduate school, I vaguely remember creating an interactive PowerPoint Webquest on the Water Cycle, so I thought I would re-visit that topic. However, as you may remember from other posts, I will not be teaching science this year, and I wanted my project to be something that I could immediately utilize in the classroom. Therefore I asked myself to determine the Reading unit that tends gives my students the most trouble. Fables is a genre of text that is very symbolic and abstract, and thus difficult for a third grader to comprehend. So, I resolved to create my Webquest on Fables, in hopes to supplement the Reading unit on Fables next year.

The name of my creation is “Tell Me a Tale: A Fable Webquest” and is broken down to five lessons. Although this assignment was quite extensive from start to finish, I believe it was the most exciting of the semester! The lessons teach the students the parts of a fable, to compare and contrast fables, and to utilize the writing process to create a fable of their own. The final artifact will be a short PowerPoint presentation that will include the title of their original fable, the beginning, the middle, the end, and the moral lesson of the fable. I kept in mind that my audience is going to be a third grade classroom, so I broke down the project into small, collaborative tasks, and even created a PowerPoint template for them to use.

Like mentioned before, I had a blast on this assignment, partially because I know that using it next year in my classroom might really help the students to master the fable unit. I know that I would love to create more Webquests in the future, because they give the students a step-by-step process in which to complete a task. I learned that designing instruction integrated with technology can be challenging and fun at the same time, but will be rewarding in the end.

I do have one concern for using Webquests in my classroom, and that is having sufficient time in the computer lab. I only have one working student computer in my room, and therefore will have to reserve the laptop lab for completion of the assignment.

The following is a link to my Webquest: Tell me a Tale: A Fable Webquest or you may copy and paste this link into your browser: http://sites.google.com/site/fablewebquest/