Evaluation of WebQuest

My favorite room in the house

This is a WebQuest for students in grades 3-5, especially students who are still learning to communicate with the English language. This WebQuest allows students to create their ‘dream room’ with free online floor plan software, as well as share their creations with an oral presentation. There are no curriculum standards included with this WebQuest, however there are many curricular alignments to the Common Core State Standards addressing content in reading, speaking & listening, and language. A rubric is also included to evaluate student work and participation. In the conclusion section, there are also options for extension activities.

This WebQuest utilizes a variety of strategies to teach content about houses, rooms, furniture, and prepositions. Since there is a large emphasis on vocabulary, this WebQuest uses quite a bit of inductive learning by exposing students to specific words and examples which will then later be used for an assignment. In addition, this WebQuest helps students learn about vocabulary through scaffolding by modeling, listening, and repeating audio and video clips. The narrator says a word or sentence, and the student is expected to repeat. There are also interactive flashcards that allow the student to explore the vocabulary on their own. In addition, there is more vocabulary practice offered through interactive online games such as matching, word search, and hangman. All of these activities prepare students to apply what they have learned and memorized to produce writing. Allowing for collaboration, students write sentences together with a partner about their favorite room. After they have had time to work with a partner, students produce sentences on their own, and then orally present their writing. These strategies can be effective for learning vocabulary, however context is missing from many of these activities. Learning vocabulary words in isolation is not ideal, but students are at least able to apply what they know to their writing.

To teach the concepts in this WebQuest, many different kinds of technological tools are made available to students. There are a few audio clips, even some that allow students to record their own voice and listen to the playback. There are also many video clips that provide audio and visual stimulation to students. One video also reinforces spelling by writing the words out as the letters are named. Students are also able to play interactive vocabulary games, as well as use online floor plan software to design their favorite room. I believe, however, that this lesson could be completed without the use of technology. Students could practice the vocabulary with flashcards and play a memory game with their own cards. In addition, students could just draw their favorite room on paper instead of online. For this WebQuest, technology is an ‘add-on’ instead of a transformative tool.

The WebQuest is complete with all links currently functional. There are no visible flaws or missing images. The material appears to be up to date. Beyond listing the links, there are no credits or sources included.

This WebQuest could be improved in a number of ways. First, I think it is vital that curriculum standards are included. I would like to include Common Core State Standards for reading, speaking & listening, and language. The content is present but is not currently matched to standards. I also noticed that several links for videos include the British pronunciation for words. This will be confusing for my students who are still learning English. It would be more appropriate to find resources that use American English for my students. As is, I probably will not use this resource in my classroom, but after some tweaking I think this could be a fun and meaningful project for my students.

Evaluation of Learning Material in MERLOT

As part of CEP 811, I have to evaluate a resource found on MERLOT. Here is the resource I have chosen to review:

Free Printable Vocabulary Flash Cards with Photographs

On MERLOT here.

On the Web here.

Quality of Content:
This resource provides vocabulary flashcards with high quality photographs. The flashcards are written correctly in a font easily read by young students. They also include the part of speech and definition if applicable. The flashcards are matched with the correct photographs and several tabs are provided to easily access vocabulary words at differing levels. This resource is educationally significant for English Language Learning students who are practicing basic and advanced vocabulary terms. In addition, this website was honored by the American Library Association in 2009 as a Great Web Site for Kids.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching-Learning Tool:
This tool can be used in a variety of contexts, grade levels, subjects, and ability levels. The material can be useful at several stages during the learning process including explanation, demonstration, practice, and application. As part of the explanation stage of the learning process, it can be used during direct instruction as a resource for teachers to communicate with English Language Learning students. The flashcards can help students visualize a challenging word and may give teachers new ways to show a word and its meaning. Students can use these flashcards as a visual dictionary to look up unknown or difficult words to practice fluency. Some of the words contain an audio file so students can hear the word, as well. This resource can also help students apply their knowledge to new situations. Teachers and students can create their own visual dictionary with words they are currently studying. It can be a class or team challenge to figure out a way to visually depict the word and its meaning using drawings, photographs, or acting it out. This resource does not include objectives or learning goals, but can easily be adapted to meet the needs of any teacher, student, age, ability, and subject. The open-endedness of this resource means teachers can create their own assignments and projects using this tool as a resource.

Ease of Use:
The layout of the website is very user-friendly. When you first load the page, a random sample word is chosen and displayed in the center. There are four tabs at the top right side of the page that will take users to the four categories of words on the site: basic, easy, medium, and hard. When you click on a tab, the words in that category will appear below it. There is a scroll bar on the right hand side to scroll to the bottom so users can view all the words. Then you can click on a word or picture to see it displayed in the center. You can easily click between tabs and on different words without navigating away from the main page. There is no login or signup required to use this resource. This resource simply requires a computer connected to the Internet. The information is presented in a way that would be familiar and attractive to students.

Suggested Improvements:
One thing that I would like to see added to this resource is a search box that will allow you to look for a particular word. I would also appreciate more audio files connected to the words and pictures. In addition, I would prefer if the printed words were all lowercase letters instead of the first letter capitalized. Unless used at the beginning of a sentence, the majority of words listed on the site should always be lowercase.

I am excited about the prospect of creating a customized visual dictionary. Several hundred cards are available to print for free for bookmaking and other projects, as well. You can click which cards in the category you want to include when printing. This is a great resource that I have bookmarked and plan to use frequently in my class. The bright, colorful, lively photographs will make for interesting discussions with my students!

How do you feel today?

Testing is finally easing up a bit which means I get to meet with some of my students again! I have two fresh students who are still learning the basics of English. This week we talked about feelings. We practiced dialogue, asking and answering questions, writing sentences, listening to each other, and reading feeling words and sentences. We also looked at our faces in the mirror and talked about how our face changes depending on how we feel. We can tell how others feel just by looking at their face. We also shared experiences that made us feel happy, sad, and mad.  I used quite a bit of multimedia and technology tools for these lessons which I would like to share with you!

Free Google Play apps about feelings
AutismXpress
Glitchy, but has great cartoon faces. I used this app just as a reference when introducing the feelings. It includes some strange ones like gassy and hiccupy.
I Am Feeling
Lego-esque faces. Tap the face to choose how you feel. The first time you tap the face it says the feeling. The second time you tap the face it will choose it. Also includes "I don't know."
Face Read 1-Autism Series
Acutal kid faces. The audio is a bit choppy. Introduces the feeling by saying: "He is ____. Who is _____?" After introducing four feelings, it gives a quick quiz by asking "Who is _____?" Students can then tap the correct face. I like that this app uses questions as well.

Web Resources about feelings
123Listening - Feelings audio files
Great resources for listening activities. This page is all about feelings and emotions. Sometimes it is difficult for students to grasp the concept of dialogue. These short audio bits are great for demonstrating dialogue. Each set gets a little bit harder with more complex sentences.
Dream English: Feelings
This site is connected to 123Listening, but has some additional examples and songs. Geared toward younger students.
How Are You? web book
You can listen online, download the audio, download as a pdf, or print the book. I project it on the big screen and have students use pointers to read. The book also discussed the reasons behind why someone feels a certain way.
Feelings Content Trailer
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this entire site. If you have not used content trailers in your class before, please try it. They are quick videos to spark student interest in a topic. This one is focused on feelings and the tune is pretty catchy. The link above will open the .wmv file.
About Face game
Arthur PBS kids. Listen to a story and decide how the character feels. It reads the story for you. For my older students, I just turn the audio off and have them read it.
Do2Learn-The Feelings Game
This game uses actual photos of real people. There is an option at the beginning to use girl, woman, or man faces. I always choose the All Faces option. There are four parts to this game, each getting progressively harder.

I hope you enjoy these resources! It took me some time to compile this list. There are so many good ideas out there, but it was hard to narrow all of them down to focus on language learning. What resources do you use to teach students about feelings?

Marching onward

Last week we completed ISTEP Applied Skills. I worked with 3rd and 5th grade students, as many of my ELL students receive accommodations for testing. This includes having the test administrator read questions aloud in English and having extended time to complete the test. I have just a few makeups to finish this week. Next week we start IREAD 3. After all of this testing, I will have one week with my students before Spring Break. I have a couple things in mind already: SMART cookie celebration and brainstorm project ideas.

This last quarter, my students will complete a collaborative online project. During CEP 810 (which just finished last week), we created a SIG - Special Interest Group. Our group decided to focus on using Web 2.0 graphic organizers to plan and produce expository writing. You can find the link to our presentation here and well as our list of resources at diigo here. It was a lot of fun to work together on this project and I am looking forward to implementing these ideas into my own classroom. I have created a separate website to document the progress on our project (We Know How To...). 

Looking ahead to summer break, I plan to organize and compile a giant list of resources for language learners that focus on all the tested skills on the LAS Links assessment. I made another separate website to keep track of that project as well (Tech4Language). I am very excited about undertaking these exciting projects and am looking forward to documenting what I learn, as well as what my students learn.

In addition, I am planning to put together a kind of SIG at my school focused around technology. I have created a basic survey here to gather information about the staff and their ideas about technology. My goal is to use this data to design technology based professional development for my colleagues.

I have lots of projects and ideas that I am excited about right now! Of course, there always seems to be other things that usually fill up my time. I just need to focus on school and work on extra projects when I can.

LAS Links is done!

I am so happy to announce that we are finished with our LAS Links testing! It took five weeks to get all my students K-5 tested but we are now finally done! Now I will be moving on to ISTEP for the next two weeks, and then IREAD for one week after that. And then finally I will be back with my students. It has been too long! I miss all my kiddos! I am excited to try out some of the new technology I have been learning about with my online courses at MSU. One of my goals for integrating technology is to update this blog at least once a week with what I am teaching and what I am learning at MSU. My last blog post was back in October so I haven't done a very good job keeping this up to date. But I can make a positive change for the future. Blogging is a great way to document what I am doing and also helps me to reflect on my practice as an educator. Keep watching here for new updates, teaching resources, and ideas!