Journal #11

Last week was our first week back in class from field. We got into groups to start our Web Quest project. My group chose to gear our webquest towards 5th graders. Our content area is Social Studies and we are focusing on standard 4, objective 4. Standard 4 states, "Students will understand that the 19th century was a time of incredible change for the United States, including geographic expansion, constitutional crisis, and economic growth." Objective 4 says students should be able to: "Understand the impact of major economic forces at work in the post-Civil War." As a group, we came up with the following questions to focus our webquest on:

1) Why did new immigrants affect the economy of post-Civil War U.S.?Why did new immigrants affect the economy of post-Civil War U.S.?

2) How did new immigrants affect the economy of post-Civil War U.S.?

3) Why did People immigrate to U.S.?

4) How did People immigrate to U.S.?

5) How did immigrants find work and food?

I think webquests are good because it allows students to have a "hands-on" learning experience. I also realize it takes a lot of time to put a webquest together. When I have my own classroom, I would love to allow my students to use a webquest if resources are available. After my own field experience and listening to other members of my cohort share their stories, I learned that it is not always easy for students to have access to technology. However, I will do my best to make sure my own class will have experience with webquests because in my opinion, this is an excellent way for students to learn new concepts. During my field experience, I noticed that students are easily engaged when they have the opportunity to do their own research. Webquests allow students to learn about anything they are interested in by going to various websites. In my field experience, the students I worked with absolutely LOVED using the internet for research. It is very important to make sure students only go to the designated websites.