Our Ecosystem Needs Help!

For my inquiry section, we decided to create a Web Quest. This was an excellent idea in the beginning, but then I realized how much work it was to complete the task. I had six groups in total to complete. Each group had to an organisms to search and find out what is happening to their ecosystems. Designing a Web Quest for fifth graders was less challenging compared to the second graders. The few aspects that I needed to take into consideration were reading, writing, and presenting the material. Before I started my Web Quest, I laid out exactly what I needed to do. I started to Google search some Web Quests to get an idea of what I was going to do. Then I managed to fins one Web Quest that related to the topic that I we had taught. I decided to take this web quest and add more organisms inside it to accommodate the six groups. In order to complete this Web Quest I used Google Sites to create each page. The beginning section of the Web Quest is the problem that they have to complete. This coincides with the Voki that was introduced to the class previously. This section was by far the easiest to create because it did need a lot of information. Moving on to the next few pages was

rough. I spent all day on these sections because there was so much information involved. The students in this classroom at an average reading level, therefore, it was easier to assign them the articles that were included in the Web Quest. They can pick and choose what to write down on their organizer we supplied them with. The way I designed this Web Quest correlates with the graphic organizers that were given to the students. There was a fill in the blank section for them to write their hypothesis and their conclusion. Unlike the second graders Web Quest, I decided to use less pictures and more words on the page because the students are in a higher grade and they don't need that guidance like the second graders. After reading the first article students need to stop and write their hypothesis based on the first article. Once the students are done with writing their hypothesis they can begin to look through the articles and find out what is happening to their organisms. Each article is personalized through online resources and this took up the majority of my time because I needed to find articles that were relevant to their organisms. After finding articles I made sure to hyperlink the online resources inside the Web Quest. The one factor that I had consider during this assignment is making sure the students or teacher candidates had access when presenting the information to the groups. One way I did this was just sending my fellow teacher candidates the link that is setup right to the Web Quest. There were so many important factors that I had to take into consideration. Once the Web Quest was designed I wanted to make sure everyone also had access to that specific Web Quest that I had created. It is so important to think of all the things that could go wrong throughout this experience because I spent so much time on this. Bishop Dunn was generous to lend us some iPads for the students to complete this Web Quest. Our group had to meet with one of the teachers to make sure the Web Quest worked on that portal because they use a different online tool. When we first went in there the Web Quest pulled right up, but one of the Java games did not show up, which then made me rethink to use a different tool. Meeting with the teacher helped us get rid of any minor details that I missed within this Web Quest. There was one group in particular that did not have an internet access when we taught, but we managed to print out the articles and they followed along like everyone else. We were thankful that the students were okay with using a hard copy of the articles.  Overall the students seemed to enjoy this Web Quest because we incorporated technology. Below is the link to the Web Quest that I created for the students. Until next time bloggers :)

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